Riders of the Storm

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Like a father, she thought abruptly. Was that why the Human offered his help? Not for what he could gain from her—not entirely—but because he missed his own children?

  Aryl slipped her arms into the sleeves. The stranger-version of a Grona coat was warmer and lighter than the real thing. Was it wrong to accept his gifts, to enjoy being cared for instead of needed?

  “What about you?” she asked.

  Marcus smiled. “Watch.” He ran a finger down the side of the pad and it split open. “Thermobed.” He took off his boots and slipped into the pad, giving a blissful groan as he stretched out. “Nice. You try?”

  “Maybe later.”

  Without their voices, truenight filled with the powerful rumble of falling water. Not unfamiliar. During the rains, water hammered roof tiles and bridges, and poured in aerial rivers along fronds and branches. This was deeper, no louder. She’d hear screams over it. Their camp was lit by glows, again normal, and she was warm. The only sensation out of place?

  The ground. Other than the faintest, constant vibration, it was immobile and hard. Wrong. It should sway, like breathing. There should be life all around her, especially beneath her. A Yena belonged high in the canopy. She missed its life. Missed color and movement. Vines and fronds and clusters of flowers. She even missed biters.

  Maybe not biters.

  But she did miss flitters. And wysps.

  Her family.

  Without conscious decision, Aryl lowered her shields, relaxing her inner guard the smallest possible amount, and reached farther than before. Not to contact her mother, she thought, only to find her, be sure she was safe.

  That she lived.

  Her unexpected awareness of the Human, though dim and vague, had come when she hadn’t used strength to find it. Now, Aryl did the same. Relax rather than concentrate. Better to be attracted to the glow of Om’ray than seek it. To let the here-I-am become the who-I-am…

  To this Talent, those were the same, she realized abruptly. Had it been a habit, all her life, to ignore that extra information, the way she’d ignore the drone of biters or drum of rain? There’d been no need to consciously know everyone nearby—unless, of course, she wanted to win at seek. There’d been every reason to hide that ability, according to Taisal. What was new, was likely Forbidden.

  Not here. Not anymore.

  Aryl reached for Yena’s Om’ray, ignoring every other glow, paid attention. Names filled her mind…no, not names. Identities, resonating one to another. No Om’ray existed in isolation, not even the Lost. Each came with bonds. Chosen to Chosen. Mother to child. Families. Heart-kin. Their connections crossed and blended, like a net woven in light.

  Within it, she might have been home again, surrounded by those who belonged together. Rimis Uruus. Her Chosen Troa. Their son Joyn. Tikva, their grandmother. Alejo Parth, Seru’s tiny brother. More. Aryl reached. Vendans. Kessa’ats. Teeracs.

  Sarcs.

  Among them. There. Her mother.

  Alive.

  But it wasn’t like home. The more Yena Aryl found, the more wrong they felt. Bonds were strained or too thin. Connections were missing.

  The exiles. Too many had been torn from the fabric of Yena itself for it to stay whole. Whole as it had been, for as she recognized the tear, she could feel its shape changing. Bonds thinned beyond comfort were being turned toward others. Connections lost were being replaced with new ones. Yena mended itself without regard to those now outside its reach.

  Excluding them. Excluding her.

  There could be no going back.

  Aryl pulled away.

  As she did, her awareness stumbled into another cluster of identities. Six Om’ray, closer to Sona than anywhere else.

  Strands of interconnection…Chosen…mother/child…brother/sister…cousin…aunt/uncle/niece/nephew…heart-kin…

  Bern.

  Shields tight, Aryl rose slowly to her feet, facing the dark toward Grona. Did he look this way, she wondered? Had he seen her, too?

  “Trouble?” Marcus wriggled free of his thermobed in a noisy, time-consuming effort that convinced her never to sleep in one.

  “Someone’s coming,” she said before she thought.

  “Oud?” He stared at the well-lit depression.

  “Grona Om’ray. They won’t arrive until late tomorrow ’night—or the day after,” she corrected, guessing they’d camp another truenight.

  She’d worry about them then. Him, then.

  “Trouble?” Marcus asked again, his eyes wide.

  Her quick denial died on her lips. “Change,” she offered, the truth, if hardly reassuring. The time she’d believed Om’ray incapable of harm to one another was long gone. Like the Sona.

  The Human plopped down at the end of his thermobed and pulled the remainder of its soft mass awkwardly over his shoulders. “Not sleep.” A declaration of intent.

  “As you wish.” She’d be glad of the company, Aryl admitted to herself, sitting again. After reaching Yena, the dark beyond the lights pressed too close, even if all it hid were the scars of Sona’s violent passing. She regarded the nervous Human thoughtfully. He studied what was long gone, a concept she was still fighting to believe.

  He returned her gaze for a moment, then said quietly, “Ask.”

  Perceptive, indeed. She half smiled. “I have a question about this place. About Sona.”

  “To know what happened here?”

  “The Oud happened.” As she’d mention a storm. The Human gave the nearby depression a worried look. “The Sona Om’ray disturbed the Agreement. Upset the peace,” she added, when he turned the worried look on her. “We’re safe.” Not that she was sure, but it was better than having Marcus run for higher ground. “How long ago? Can you tell?” He’d tossed his belt of devices into a corner of the tent—a revealing lack of respect for such technology. Ordinary to him, however extraordinary to her.

  “Om’ray not know?”

  Question for question, was it? Aryl made herself comfortable, willing to play for now. “None of us knew Sona existed before coming here.”

  “You know name. How?”

  One she didn’t want to answer. “When?” she countered.

  Marcus took a handful of dirt and let it fall. Dust rose like smoke in the lights. “Recent. This century.” At her frown, “Wrong word for Om’ray time? How you count how old?”

  A knot for a day. Age? “Yena count the M’hir Wind and the Harvest,” she offered dubiously. “There’s only one a year.”

  He smiled. “Ah. Good. Same thing. All seasons pass one time, count one year. Same all your world.”

  On her world. Implying other worlds. As if the “past” wasn’t enough to make her head feel swollen inside. But she had to ask. “A year isn’t the same on yours?”

  “My world closer to its sun, shorter orbit. Makes my year faster. Trade Pact use standard year so all worlds have common reference. Otherwise, every time be different. Everyone be too early, too late!” Marcus paused his enthused babble. “Aryl not happy?”

  Aryl was decidedly not, the “sun” and its behavior being a particular sore point and everything else he said making matters worse. “Om’ray are the world,” she informed him testily. “Nothing else is real!”

  Foolish Human.

  Who pursed his lips and appeared fascinated by the heatbox. “Is this Aryl truth—your truth?”

  If there’d been condescension in his tone or manner, any hint of amusement at the “ignorant Om’ray,” she would have insisted what the Adepts taught was exactly that: her truth, too.

  But there wasn’t. Marcus Bowman, Analyst and Triad First, seeker after the unimaginably old from another world, Chosen and father in his Human fashion, passed no judgment.

  Forcing her to do it instead.

  Aryl chose words with great care, more afraid of her own daring than of being misunderstood. “The truth is that Om’ray are always aware of each other. Part of each other. We must be.”

  “Must be?”

  “I
’m uncomfortable,” she admitted with a pained expression she hoped he could read, “to be this far from my people. The only ones who willingly leave their Clan—” except Yena’s exiles, “—are unChosen. And they only travel to find another Clan.” Except Enris. “I think—maybe we speak of ourselves as the world because we can be no other place. Do you understand, Marcus? But I—” She broke into a sweat beneath the Human’s coat. “—I don’t think the world ends beyond us. Not anymore. There must be another side to this mountain. The waterfall must come from somewhere. You do.”

  “I do.” Marcus leaned his chin in his hand, his elbow on one bent knee. A thoughtful pose. “Other side of this mountain are more. Many more. Mountain range. This waterfall come from river that cuts through range. I have seen. Aryl right. World bigger.”

  She felt giddy, a reaction probably due more to terrified exhaustion than the thrill of discovery. No, she admitted, the thrill was there, like leaping for a chancy hold. “If,” she dared, “Om’ray have believed Cersi—the world—is only where we can sense one another, maybe that is why Om’ray history is only about those who are real—who we can sense.”

  “What do you mean?” he echoed, eyes shadowed and intent. “What is Om’ray history?”

  “Stories. We tell each other what’s happened to us. UnChosen on Passage take their Clan’s stories to their new one.” She felt foolish and hesitated.

  “Same for us,” Marcus offered immediately. “Stories important. How else know long ago time? Stories live after we dust.” He lifted and released another handful of dirt, then held out his tight fist. “Stories live forever.”

  “Of course not. Not ours,” Aryl corrected hastily, seeing the difference. The air around them seemed to listen. She shuddered but continued. “Ours stop.”

  With a puzzled frown, the Human lowered his fist. “Why? Not understand.”

  How to explain what she barely grasped herself? “Costa. The others. The ones who died during the Harvest. You remember them?”

  This softened his eyes. “Sorry, Aryl. Will always remember.”

  “Always?” Her envy at that easy promise thickened her voice. “Om’ray will not. Cannot. Once everyone who ever sensed them as real has also died, they will no longer exist to other Om’ray. Their story will be tossed aside and forgotten, like the empty husk of a body. For us, history is bound to the living, Marcus. That’s why the Eldest of each family is on Council. They connect us to all there is of our past.”

  She’d upset him somehow. “History is more,” Marcus protested. “History is all who lived, ever. All they did, ever. Our work here—we make vidrecordings so others will know. Vital. Important! Can’t forget!”

  “Why?”

  From his stricken expression, she might have asked him why he kept breathing.

  “If we don’t live in a place, why should we care if it exists?” she went on, perversely enjoying playing the Adept. “If we can’t sense for ourselves someone is real, why should we care if that person ever existed?”

  “Aryl not believe this. Not!” He bounced up and down on the thermobed.

  Aryl almost smiled. “When I’m with you, Marcus,” she brushed her fingers along his sleeve, “I don’t. But my people do. They always have.”

  Though mollified, he wagged his finger in her face. “Ah, but you not know that. If no Om’ray history before elder’s experience, how can know that?” Definitely smug.

  “Our Adepts teach us that nothing has changed.” She didn’t add that the Agreement between Om’ray, Oud, and Tikitik held that nothing should. A new problem: what to tell someone who would remember always.

  An eyebrow lifted. “Truth or what they decide is truth?”

  Ideas were dangerous. This one, Aryl was quite sure, would be Forbidden. “The Adepts are trusted,” she assured him, despite the sour taste the words left in her mouth. “They keep a Clan’s Record. Who was born, who was their Choice, their children.” Who caused trouble…who did the Forbidden…who was exiled to die…did Yena’s Adepts write those words, too? “I’ve had—” said with determination, “—no reason to doubt what they teach.”

  “Evidence here—” Marcus waved his hand at their surroundings. “Sona change. Maybe Om’ray not care and forget,” this as if a huge concession, making her frown. “Adepts write record. Maybe they not care and forget. Record—never forget.”

  Her frown lifted in surprise. But the Human wasn’t wrong. If any Sona Om’ray had come to Yena on Passage, his arrival and Joining would have been recorded by Yena’s Adepts.

  Had long-ago Adepts recorded Sona’s death, too? They would have felt it. Part of the world would have suddenly ceased to exist; every Om’ray would be disoriented, the way she’d been when her father died, then afraid, as she’d been.

  So afraid.

  Lost.

  Marcus leaned back, hands clasped around one knee. “Where these records?” Oh so casual. “In Cloisters?”

  Never for strangers!!! But he couldn’t feel her sending, could he, no matter how furious or forceful. Marcus Bowman wasn’t real.

  All Om’ray could die and nothing would change for this Human or his kind. They would make their own kind of record and go about their work. They would travel anywhere, not only where they felt existed. They would remember anything they chose, long after an Om’ray would forget.

  “Sorry, Aryl,” he said quickly, sitting straight. “Not mean harm. Curiosity too much. Sorry.”

  They were the same outside, Aryl thought, staring at his too-familiar face.

  They were not the same within.

  She leaped to her feet and ran into the dark.

  “Aryl! Please stop!”

  She’d do nothing of the sort, Aryl vowed as she staggered forward, hands out to break a fall, if not prevent one. Behind her came the Human, too quickly. He shouldn’t be catching up. She tried to hurry and tripped on the uneven ground.

  They were both fools. She knew it. Knew it was sheer folly to be out in the dark of truenight, let alone to run over unfamiliar ground. But she couldn’t bear it—couldn’t bear him. All that mattered was getting away. She climbed to her feet to run again.

  “Aryl—Ooooffph!” Another gasp and grunt. He fell more often. “Stop!”

  How could he be gaining on her? She risked a look back. No light. They’d left the campsite behind. She’d wanted to find the grove, to lose herself among its stalks. Where was it? Sona was behind her…so dim she might be dreaming the glow of Om’ray. She was losing her sense of direction…

  If she went too far this way, she’d fall out of the world. She’d be nowhere…

  Not if the Human’s ideas—not if her new ideas—not if the world was more than Om’ray…

  …then what was she?

  Aryl sobbed, wiping blood from her nose, and staggered on. She was too alone. Only the M’hir was close by. If she could lose the Human, she’d be able to stop, to concentrate. Use it to find her mother. Find anyone. Go anywhere but here.

  “ARYL!!! Look out! Danger!” His shout was louder than the waterfall’s drone.

  A trick. She slowed anyway, hands pushing truenight from her face. Slowed, but didn’t stop.

  Her next step threw her into empty air, down and down to suffocating darkness that pulled and tumbled and bit…her scream cost the last breath from her lungs…she tried to inhale and ice-cold water poured into her mouth and nose…the darkness was like the M’hir, overwhelming and endless…she surrendered and fell…

  “Aryl.”

  She spasmed awake, then held on as the world tilted around her. Held on…? Aryl looked down to find her hands clenched on Marcus’ arms. She let go and pushed herself away with frantic kicks until her back hit something solid and she couldn’t move.

  “Safe.” His voice was strained and hoarse.

  There was light. Daylight, not one of his devices. Firstlight. His face was dreadful: gray-tinged and badly scratched, a bruise starting below one eye and a swollen lower lip. His hair and clothes were soaking
wet; the color leaked from his pretend-Yena tunic to stain the dirt. Hunched and shivering, he watched her without moving.

  She was wet, too, Aryl discovered, dragging her hands up to her face. Wet. Cold. Achingly sore. Her ribs…a knee. “What—?” She stopped. She’d been in water before. He’d saved her from it before.

  She looked around, blinking to focus. They were beside the waterfall. But its lake had been a dream, a Sona memory. Now its water poured into a deep pit—“Nooo.” The terrified moan couldn’t be hers. Aryl fought to control herself. “Tell me I didn’t fall into—into that.”

  “Safe,” Marcus answered, as if too exhausted to do more than repeat the word. “Both are.”

  He’d fallen in, too? Then how—

  The support behind her back shifted. “Goodgoodgoodgood. Both safe.”

  Aryl found herself beside the Human before realizing she’d moved, staring up at the Oud.

  It wasn’t wet, was her first coherent thought. Of course it wasn’t, her next. It didn’t like water. If this was the same Oud. “How?” she blurted.

  “Filtrationsystem,” Marcus babbled. “Auto.”

  “Make sense!”

  The Oud remained reared, but silent. The Human sighed. “Metal screen below. Catch what fall in. Keep out big objects. Understand? Catch us. Rise. Dump us here.”

  Too much sense. Aryl pressed against him, suddenly finding the Human less frightening. The Oud had diverted the river from Sona. Put their machines in it. Had they destroyed this place to take its water? Why?

  The Oud’s limbs waved in unison. “Alive now? Goodgoodgood.”

  Incomprehensible creature. “Of course I’m alive,” she began.

  “You no breathe,” Marcus whispered urgently in her ear. “Stupid Oud. Thought you dead. I stop it take you underground. Make it let me fix.”

  Fix? Aryl turned to look at him. “I wasn’t breathing?” she asked uncertainly.

  His lips trembled, blue with cold, but his eyes were fierce. “Aryl fine now. Stupid Oud not know humanoid physio—”

  “Alive! Goodgoodgood!” the Oud interrupted. Its limbs moved with dazzling speed, conveying a small dark object from under its body. “Take take. Hurry!”