“No!” Costa grabbed her arm to haul her back. “This is far enough—too far, Aryl. We’d only be in the way.” His free hand waved at the roof of gently swaying stems. There was more blue between them now. “There’s no room. Stay—”
“There’s all the room in the world.” She shook free. “I want to feel the M’hir for myself. I want to touch the sky. Don’t try to stop me, Costa. Wait here if you must.”
He lifted both hands and stepped aside, automatically wary of the deck’s edge. When Aryl felt his weight on the ladder behind her as she climbed, she smiled to herself.
The first twenty rungs plunged them deep within the strange aerial grove of the rastis, until Aryl couldn’t see in any direction but straight ahead to the next slat of wood. The stems brushed against her and one another. They didn’t feel like plants anymore. They moved without wind, as if impatient. With each upward and inward step, she could see the stems swelling, enlarging along the spiral indentation, turning slowly as they did.
There were always scents in the grove—decay from the shadowed water below, blends of musk and sweet and sour from the creatures who moved and climbed. Above all the rich blend of growing things, the perfumes that changed with the seasons as flowers opened, ripened to fruits, and fell into the water to rot.
Here? Aryl had smelled dresel all her life, but that faint clear spice was nothing to the heady draft now entering her nostrils. She felt as though she climbed through fragrance, warmed and pierced by shafts of brilliant light.
The ladder met two others at a triangular platform, unexpectedly small. As Aryl stepped up to it, her head cleared the top of the rastis stems at last.
The world exploded away on every side, roofed in blue, carpeted in red-orange, punctuated by taller growths with their clusters of green leaves. Nekis? They had to be, though Aryl had trouble connecting these full, lush tops, filled with flitters, to the spare, hard-to-climb trunks that stretched their pale columns from the water below.
She shook off the vegetation’s spell and moved, mute and staring, to give Costa room beside her. She pointed to the strange harsh line against the sky. “Costa. Do you think those are mountains?”
“I think I’m going to be sick.” He shaded his eyes with one hand. Aryl followed suit. “Yes. They have to be. The world, Aryl. It’s too small.”
“This can’t be all of it,” she reasoned. But the same dismay kept her voice low too.
The red of the rastis extended only so far. The seemingly vast groves of the Sarcs, the Teeracs, the whole of their clan—from this new perspective they melded together into a smallish mass, one bounded by wild stone and by a darker, more twisted foliage that itself gave way to an expanse of glittering light. Aryl squinted. “Is that the ocean?”
“It can’t be. The other clans are between us and the sea. That must be where the Tikitik have their crops. I’ve heard they need water open to the sun. They have ways to control what will grow in a place. An understanding beyond any Om’ray . . .”
As well as Costa, Aryl felt the others, knew where they were, with the slightest effort, who they were. Her head turned to seek them. “Costa. Look. There. They’ve strung the lines.”
Her eyes fought the bright sunlight until she could make out what she hadn’t before. The rastis groves were covered in ropes, as if a weaver bigger than any imagined in a nightmare had used the strong nekis trunks to support its looping web.
Figures were moving into the open along that web, bare feet sure despite the rope’s bounce and sway. Arms were extended, for balance and to run fingers along support threads too thin to see from this distance. Almost flying, she thought with an envy close to pain.
That could have been her. Should have been her.
Aryl could see the pattern they made as it took shape, here and in the distance. Each Om’ray was running to his or her place along a curved line beyond the rastis groves, downwind.
Flitters launched into the air, as if disturbed. Instead of wheeling and crying in protest, they plunged without sound into the canopy, disappearing from sight.
They fled the coming M’hir. She knew it. Could almost taste it.
The Om’ray had found their places and stopped, waiting. Aryl saw flashes as hooks were freed from their belts and held ready.
Watchers moaned again. This time Aryl could tell their sound came from the mountains.
Costa’s fingers locked around hers as the world seemed to take and hold an endless breath. He pulled, urgently, and Aryl obeyed, dropping to lie beside him on the small platform. His arm went over her. Hold on! she heard, not words but mindspeech.
As she grabbed for her own hold on the platform, she twisted her neck to see.
The crimson stems nearest her face trembled in the silence. Trembled . . . then bent ever-so-slightly. No, they weren’t bending. Aryl’s eyes widened as the stems began to twist open.
Costa stiffened beside her, lifted up as if compelled to look closer. No! she sent, reinforcing the sarning with a grab at his hand, determined to hold him safe.
Then there was no need for warnings.
The M’hir struck.
A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition) Page 43
