Rift in the Sky Read online

  “It’s not right,” Aryl muttered. Enris had rescued his young brother Worin and Yuhas and his Chosen Caynen S’udlaat from the disaster. The Oud had inadvertently saved more, bringing fifteen Tuana they’d found in their tunnels to Sona. The Tikitik claimed all who remained, taking Tuana for their own in some bizarre trade with the Oud.

  Tuana, now Tikitik.

  What was it like, to stand on the platforms of Tuana’s Cloisters and watch the Tikitik flood the ground, plant their wilderness of rastis and nekis? Did the swarms already climb during truenight, to eat anything alive and exposed to their jaws?

  Enris and his people had never dealt with danger like that. He’d told her their greatest risk, other than the whim of Oud, was of accidents around harvesting machinery.

  “Not right.” Aryl took her knife and stabbed at the roots of the purple thorn plant.

  “For all you know, that’s our one and only rokly. Leave it be.”

  “Rokly grows on some kind of vine.” Knife poised for another strike, Aryl scowled up at Naryn S’udlaat. “I think it’s a weed.”

  Her friend laughed. “Because it has thorns? Many fruiting plants protect themselves. You Yena think everything’s a threat.”

  Everything was, if it could be. But Aryl shrugged peacefully, conceding the point. Yena skills weren’t of use in this—only their strength. She wished, not for the first time, for Costa. There’d be one Yena the ground dwellers couldn’t mock. Only her brother had stuck clippings into jars and tried to grow plants on purpose. “We’re all Sona now,” she countered. “We’ll learn what we must.”

  Naryn gestured apology, though her blue eyes continued to sparkle. “True, though some of us learn faster than others. I’m glad I found you.”

  Aryl studied the other as she rose to her feet. Naryn’s Clan had been Tuana, but she’d been exiled before the Oud brought her here. Like Yao, she was different. Her willful red hair might be tamed by a net much like Aryl’s—though Aryl’s was of ancient metal, a treasure cleaned and repaired for her by Enris—but it hadn’t been the result of a true Choice and Joining. Her abdomen thickened with new life, too—larger, since her time would be early summer—but the baby within had no father.

  And its birth would kill both mother and child.

  You have bigger worries. The sending was tinged with impatience . Naryn hid any fear for her future behind shields stronger than any Om’ray Aryl had known. She refused sympathy, using her strength and training to help the rest of Sona. She also refused friendship other than Aryl’s, though she had an understanding of sorts with Haxel Vendan, their First Scout. The two, powerful in their own ways, shared a contempt for those they considered fools. Aloud, “We have a problem.”

  Especially fools who caused problems. Aryl sighed, wiping her knife blade on her leggings. The purple plant looked smug; weed, she warned it silently. “For once, tell me it isn’t Oran.”

  Her former heart-kin’s Chosen was almost as Powerful as Naryn. Better schooled, having made full Adept as part of Grona Clan. Not a day passed when Oran didn’t find some way to remind them of their great good fortune in having her decide to make her home at Sona.

  Naryn raised a shapely eyebrow in mock surprise. “How did you know?”

  If there was anyone Aryl would exile herself, it was Oran di Caraat.

  If there was anyone they couldn’t afford to lose, it was their only Healer.

  “What did she do?”

  “Came out of the Cloisters this morning, bold as you like. Ezgi was there to see.”

  “Is that all?” Relieved, Aryl slipped her knife into its sheath on her belt, then dusted her hands. “She’s welcome to it.” She couldn’t help the bitter note to her voice.

  The Cloisters made the perfect destination for those practicing their new skill. Easy to remember, while safe from surprises and watching eyes of any kind.

  So far, it was good for nothing else. No one but Aryl could unlock its doors. She had an Adept’s Power; Naryn had taught her the trick. In the end, it had taken the child growing within her, the touch of one who belonged to Sona. She’d hoped that meant Seru could as well, being pregnant, but her cousin’s attempt had failed, leaving her miserable and Oran contemptuous.

  Inside? Empty halls and silence. They’d all explored, heard nothing but their own voices and footsteps, turned doors to vacant rooms. Either Sona’s Adepts had abandoned their haven to die with their kin, or their bodies lay together in some hidden place. Unlike the mounds, no treasures of food or supplies beckoned. No water flowed from its outlets. The lights shone, as if someone had forgotten to turn them off.

  There were secrets. Some doors couldn’t be opened. Some levels couldn’t be reached.

  Secrets that could wait, all had agreed, until the vital spring seeding was complete.

  All but two, she recalled with a grimace. Their pair of Grona Adepts had envisioned moving right in, eager to live apart from the rest and do whatever Adepts did alone.

  Not, Haxel ordered in no uncertain terms, while Sona needed every hand to dig dirt and carry water. The Cloisters wasn’t going to feed them.

  Naryn tilted her head just so. Impatience, by any measure.

  What had she missed? “He saw her ‘come out,’ ” Aryl repeated, then blinked. “She can unlock the doors?”

  “With no trouble at all.”

  “Then Oran’s finally pregnant.” Aryl wasn’t sure how she felt about that, though it was, she realized with a wince, the right timing. The Adept and Bern had, to his obvious relief, finally consummated their Joining. Though she detested the notion, it was apparently her doing. She and Bern had been heart-kin, a connection that encouraged a certain resonance, Myris had explained, with dimples, when Aryl and Enris had so robustly consummated their own.

  Enris, wisely, had refrained from any comment whatsoever.

  “Seru’s problem.” Naryn dismissed the subject of Oran’s pregnancy with a callous shrug.

  Aryl felt a rush of sympathy for her cousin. Well aware of the Adept’s opinion of her, Seru kept her distance. Now they’d be forced into one another’s company, for the sake of the unborn.

  Pregnancy, however, didn’t explain why Oran would bother with locks. If anything, she ’ported more frivolously than the children. “Why the doors?”

  Naryn’s smile was unpleasant. “Her friend can’t get in otherwise.”

  “Hoyon.” Who had yet to ’port.

  Like any Talent, there were those who took to it like breathing, those who struggled, and those who possessed no ability at all. The Adept could send objects into the M’hir, just not himself. His Chosen, Oswa, though less powerful, had needed only to share Aryl’s memory of how it was done.

  How much of Hoyon’s “couldn’t” was fear? Not the first time she’d wondered that. For something this new, Adept training was of no use. There’d been no way to predict who of Sona would be capable or how the Talent would manifest beyond oneself. Touch mattered. Only Aryl could ’port another Om’ray through the M’hir without touching that individual, but she couldn’t do the same for an object unless she held it in her hands. Enris and Fon could send anything they saw into the M’hir, but not reliably bring it out again.

  As for ’porting itself, Power made a difference: the weaker couldn’t travel as far as those stronger, though no one knew why. Aryl suspected a deeper instinct kept Om’ray from staying too long with the M’hir. That darkness was utterly strange. Terrifying, consuming, alluring. It took Power to stay sane amid its chaos, to forge a connection to another mind. All the while, time crawled, measured itself in that outpouring of strength, became finite. Overstay, and risk losing oneself.

  She and Enris had yet to find limits to their range. Seru and a few of the others, including Haxel, could ’port no farther than the mounds. The rest practiced ’porting to and from the Cloisters’ Council Chamber, safe from watchers, when not working the fields. Or played ’port and seek to torment their elders.

  Hoyon should be strong enoug
h.

  Fear, then. She and Enris had been driven into the M’hir by desperate need. Maybe they should find Hoyon his own crisis. At the thought, the free ends of Aryl’s hair lashed against her back.

  The two Grona, busy inside the abandoned Cloisters. “What are they doing?” she puzzled aloud. “The place is empty.”

  Its surroundings weren’t. The Oud gnawed at the nearby cliff with their machines, day through truenight according to scouts. The Stranger camp stood between that busyness and the grove around the Cloisters. It was no place for Om’ray to be careless.

  “Someone should find out.”

  Meaning her. Aryl glared. “Why me?”

  Her friend merely smiled gently. You’re the one they fear.

  Games. Fine for children, Aryl fumed to herself as she drew on her second-best tunic, then yanked free the Speaker’s Pendant to lie on top. Her hair shivered itself free of dust, then fought her attempt to bind it again. The stuff was every bit a nuisance. If she could, she’d shave it off.

  The notion sent it writhing into her eyes.

  Let me. Enris was behind her, as abruptly as the sun coming from behind a cloud. Aryl closed her eyes, feeling her hair ripple and wind itself through his fingers, cling to his wrists. Highly unfair, that it obeyed his touch and not hers.

  Unfair . . . and delicious. Her bones wanted to melt. More often than not, this was where her hair escaped the net entirely, along with all responsible thought. Not this time. I have to deal with them.

  “I know.” Aloud, to hide his opinion. Which, she thought with some asperity, told her anyway.

  “I can’t leave it to Haxel,” she said, turning to face him. “Last time . . .”

  His lips quirked. “What’s wrong with a turn at the watch fire?”

  Aryl didn’t bother mentioning their restless sleep that particular truenight. Had anyone trusted the inexperienced Adepts to stay awake? “If there’s another confrontation, you know what’ll happen. Haxel will insist they go back to Grona. Cetto and Morla would agree in a heartbeat. The rest—?” They hadn’t had an issue divide them. She’d prefer to keep it that way. Sona’s numbers were too few, their cohesiveness as a Clan still fragile. “Having our own Healer is a comfort,” she finished lamely.

  “We wouldn’t need a Healer if Marcus—”

  “No.”

  Aryl recognized the glint in his eye: one of her Chosen’s usually admirable qualities, that stubborn streak. “—if Marcus taught me to use his technology,” Enris went on as if she hadn’t objected. “You’ve seen it. Worin’s leg might never have been smashed. The Strangers’ healing machine is as good or better than anything Oran can do. Marcus would teach me.” If you asked.

  Oh, she understood that desire. The wonders in Marcus Bowman’s camp by the waterfall tempted her as well. But the Human had agreed to let her and her alone decide how much contact he should have with other Om’ray. For good reason. Aryl pressed two fingers gently over her Chosen’s lips. We can’t rely on their devices. They won’t be on Cersi forever. We must depend on ourselves.

  Enris caught her fingers, kissed them, held them in his. “And we will. The Strangers’ machine gives us time to find another Healer. Aryl. You must see it. Those Adepts have to go. Why wait for the next time they cause trouble? Sona won’t be whole as long as Oran and Hoyon fight you for leadership.”

  “I’m not fight—” His smile stopped her protest; Aryl settled for glowering. “We can’t send them to Grona,” she said instead. “Oswa and Yao belong here, with us.”

  “And Bern?”

  Anything but a simple question. Enris was the most easygoing and charming Om’ray imaginable, willing and able to find the best in others, to inspire it. That he’d come to so thoroughly dislike Bern sud Caraat, her former heart-kin, had nothing to do with jealousy. Chosen, Joined for life, could have no doubt of each other. But distrust rumbled beneath the words.

  And contempt.

  Aryl leaned her forehead against Enris’ chest. “He was my friend.”

  “Who smiles and whispers, and spreads doubt about everything you say or do, while Oran plays the noble Healer.”

  He supports his Chosen. You do the same.

  Not so. His big arms drew her close. I love my Chosen to distraction, but when you’re wrong—Aryl felt his deep laugh—I’m the first to tell you.

  And you’re so perfect . . .

  A rush of heat. “How right you are,” he murmured into her hair, which squirmed joyfully against its net. His hands began exploring.

  Insufferable Tuana. “I’ll see you later,” Aryl told him, then concentrated and pushed . . .

  Aroused, the M’hir’s heaving darkness was wilder than usual. No surprise, Aryl thought wryly in the brief instant before she emerged.

  So was she.

  Sona’s Cloisters didn’t rise on a stalk, like Yena’s, but rather sat on the ground like a discarded flower. Oud had thrown dirt against its windows and filled in the lowermost platform. They’d sought a way inside . . . curious about what none of their kind had seen.

  Marcus Bowman was curious, too, but knew better than to attempt such trespass. He might hope for an invitation, but even if she could bring herself to consider it, her Human friend was no longer alone.

  For the Oud had made a discovery in their cliff, drawing what Haxel and Aryl glumly considered too much attention to Sona’s remote valley. First had come the rest of Marcus’ new Triad, for the Strangers worked in threes, each with a specific task. In his words: Analyst, Scantech, and Recorder. Aryl had seen them from a distance. Not Human, unless they came in a wider range of body shapes than she’d appreciated; he’d explained once that each Triad had to have different species.

  Only a few, those who were or looked Human, stayed past truenight; in that, Marcus managed to keep some order in his camp, or the prohibition against non-Humans too close to Cersi’s own races continued. A third building had gone up. More aircars came and went, even in storms, as if what had been found here mattered more than personal safety.

  Not, Aryl thought with a sigh, that she’d noticed much concern for that in Marcus Bowman either. The Human made Ziba seem cautious, not to mention he could be distracted by a biter.

  She delayed the inevitable.

  Aryl brushed imaginary dust from her tunic. She’d ’ported inside the Council Chamber. Windows stretched to the high ceiling, their lower two thirds obscured by gravel and dust thanks to the Oud. The floor, which should gleam, was dull. No dust, as if the inside of the Cloisters cleaned itself, but no feet or cloth had burnished its surface for long years.

  Eighty-three years, according to Marcus, had passed since Sona’s destruction by the Oud. That was his skill: to follow trails through the past as a hunter would prey by the bend of a frond or an impression on bark. What Marcus and his fellows sought lay so long ago that—if she believed him—lakes and mountains had swallowed the remains of those who’d once lived on this and other worlds.

  The Hoveny Concentrix, he called them. A vast civilization blending thousands of different kinds of beings that had failed long before the current blend of races, the First, laid claim to this part of space. Most recent of all, his kind, Humanity, with their far-flung Commonwealth. At this edge, a Trade Pact had formed with the First. Layer upon layer of civilizations, stretched through time as much as distance.

  Enris found the concept fascinating.

  Aryl found it troubling, if she thought of it at all.

  Though it was hard not to think of the past, here, standing where unknown Om’ray had stood. Her sleep was no longer visited by their memories, the dreams a Cloisters sent to inform Choosers and Adepts at need. On the journey here, Seru had dreamed the death of Sona’s Om’ray, a warning to keep away. When they’d refused to take heed and settled in the ruined village, new dreams had shown them where to find food, as well as images of how the Sona had lived.

  This had been a prosperous, advanced Clan. Every Sona, not just Adepts, could read and write. They’
d lived in peace with their Tikitik neighbors, trading certain crops for wood for their homes, for the knowledge of how to make a difficult land fruitful. Numerous, too. Cetto estimated Sona’s village could have housed over a thousand Om’ray, and there had been a second settlement, outside the Cloisters, devoted to the aged and infirm.

  No Clan boasted such numbers now. Pana came closest, at over seven hundred.

  The dreams had ended—as if they should somehow have learned all that was necessary. But they hadn’t, Aryl thought, gnawing her lower lip in frustration. Was the purple plant a weed? Would summer here be hot and dry, or turn cold too soon? How did they preserve any food that grew? They didn’t know how the mounds worked, or if their once-opened doors could be resealed.

  All of Sona had died when the Oud moved in to reshape their valley. Aryl’s darker imaginings suggested a second disaster, because the Tikitik and Oud lived in Balance, trading Om’ray Clans like baskets of fruit. No one knew of another lost Clan, which meant nothing. None had known of Sona either. When she’d led the exiles here, the Oud had claimed them. It hadn’t been long before the Tikitik had demanded and received that terrible compensation: the Oud reshaped Tuana, leaving only its Cloisters, and those sheltered within, unharmed.

  Only the Cloisters.

  Like Sona.

  Aryl stilled, the way she would if she’d heard a strange sound in the canopy and waited to see if it was something with a taste for Om’ray flesh.

  Last spring, she’d known the world was defined by Om’ray.

  An illusion. Om’ray did not travel beyond their sense of one another and inhabited just this small corner of Cersi. Cersi herself was but a single small world; the stars overhead shone on more than she could count in a lifetime.