Riders of the Storm

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Afraid to disobey, Aryl rose to her feet. Marcus came with her, his arm firm around her shoulders. She wasn’t sure which of them supported the other, but she was grateful.

  “Take!”

  She held out both hands, and it dropped the object, a dusty cloth pouch, into them.

  “Open!”

  Hard to glare at something without a face, but she did her best. “Tell me what’s inside first.”

  “Us!”

  Which made no sense, other than suggest this was yesterday’s Oud.

  “Curious,” Marcus whispered.

  Aryl knew her body, knew it close to failing, knew she couldn’t—not for her people’s sake. Transferring the pouch to one hand, she slipped the fingers of the other between the Human’s and pressed their palms together, taking comfort and warmth when she dared take nothing more. Not so close to the Oud. But even through her shields, she could taste Marcus’ emotions. Determination. Courage. Loyalty. A healthy dose of fear.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Aryl smiled her mother’s smile at the Oud. “I’ll open it if you promise to give water back to Sona’s river.”

  The limbs stopped their constant fidgeting. “Open first.”

  Fair enough. She freed her hand—Marcus resisting for an instant—and flipped open the pouch. And stared.

  “Us,” the Oud insisted.

  “What is?” Marcus whispered.

  Aryl eased the Speaker’s Pendant from the fabric. It looked the same as the one Taisal wore; it should, they were all the same, whether Om’ray, Oud, or Tikitik. Dirt-encrusted. Buried among bones, perhaps, until Sona echoed with Om’ray voices once more and the Oud—by the Agreement—required a Speaker.

  If she put this around her neck, would that make Sona a Clan again?

  If she didn’t, the Oud would be within their rights to ignore their very existence. They could reshape this valley at whim. And probably would. Her people could never outrun the destruction.

  Aryl put it over her head. The metal links were cold on her neck and the pendant left streaks of brown dirt on her sodden stranger-coat. She stood as tall as she could without shaking. “Send your Speaker to Sona,” she told the Oud. “We have much to discuss.”

  “Yesyesyesyes.” With each exuberant word, it backed itself into the ground, spraying them both with dirt and pebbles. “GoodGoodGoodGood! Soon.”

  Then it was gone.

  “Marcus,” she said—or thought she said. Everything was growing dim. “Marcus?”

  “Here.” A shoulder pushed under her arm. “Here. Need rest, Aryl. Come.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Left to herself, she would have gladly curled into a ball on the stony ground and slept right there, but he insisted on moving.

  Aryl did her best to stay upright and move her feet. He staggered when she did, making her chuckle. “Silly Human.”

  “Aryl fell first.”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” she pleaded, her cheeks warm. Then, with dreadful suspicion. “Don’t take me to other Om’ray. Don’t talk to them. Promise me, Marcus. Please.”

  “Too far,” he said grimly. Practical, if not a promise. “My camp. Secret.”

  Secret. She didn’t want any more secrets. About anything.

  But as she stumbled between nekis that were too short, too thin, thrifty with bud, the M’hir swooped close. All she had to do was close her eyes to see what had been here before…

  Blankets on the stone…cushions scattered overtop like leaves…children nestled like bright summer flowers…they used fine-tipped brushes to write their names on polished flats of wood…to write words that made each other laugh…to write whatever they wanted…

  Words…or were they only lines and curves and dots on wood…

  Aryl pushed herself out of the dream, letting herself sag into arms that didn’t let her fall.

  Interlude

  ENRIS GROANED AND BROUGHT HIS arm up to shield his eyes. He squinted. How did the sun get up there so fast? It should be truenight. There should be…rocks? He sat so quickly his head spun. “I’m not dead!” he proclaimed.

  “Were you expecting to be?”

  Enris twisted to face the voice, one hand supporting himself on the pebbles. Ditch. He remembered. He’d fallen into one of Sona’s ditches.

  And he was facing the last being he’d expect to find here.

  The Tikitik squatted comfortably, its knees above its head—which was easy, since its head hung below its shoulders on a long curved neck. All four of the creature’s eyes were on him, the tiny front pair on their movable cones, as well as the large pair near the back of what passed for its face. The wormlike protuberances where its mouth should be writhed slowly. Cloth marked with symbols circled both wrists and ankles.

  Gray wrists and ankles, the color of the pebbles. Its skin of overlapping bony plates was gray, too. Only the short spines running up the outside of each arm and the eyes were the black he remembered. A different kind of Tikitik? He’d never heard of such a thing. Enris found a more dignified position. “Being dead was a reasonable outcome of last ’night,” he observed.

  “Because of them?” A long, too-thin arm gestured toward Vyna.

  Enris looked, then stared.

  There had to be thirty rocks of various sizes, piled on one another, all too close. He scooted backward quickly, bumping into his pack.

  “They cannot come nearer, Om’ray.” The Tikitik barked its laugh. “I thought you knew you slept in a safe place.”

  “Safe…how is this safe?”

  “The Sona built well.”

  Sona? The only thing “built” here was the remains of this ditch. Could that be what it meant? The rock hunters had indeed stopped before touching the bed of same-sized pebbles. If so, he’d avoided being crushed and consumed by a couple of steps, no more.

  And a fall. Enris took stock, the Tikitik seeming content to sit and watch. His head hurt. He dragged fingers over his forehead and found a lump, but no wound. One elbow twanged painfully, but it moved freely. Nothing broken.

  He’d had the kind of good fortune that came once in a lifetime, if he didn’t count present company. What was the Tikitik doing here—and why with him? They couldn’t be trusted; to his inner sense, it wasn’t there at all. He’d learned to ignore that particular discomfort.

  Perhaps the creature could be useful. Enris made himself lean back comfortably. “Why would an empty ditch stop them?”

  Its head bobbed sharply, twice. An indication of some strong emotion, he thought. “Hard Ones have an instinct for self-preservation. The courseways were not always empty. The risk of encountering water?” It turned a hand downward. “They drown. That is why they rest on one another if they can, for fear of rain. Those on the bottom rarely survive. Do you think that cruel?”

  Enris glanced at the pile of living rock, then beyond it. He frowned at the Tikitik. “I think they’re a problem. I’m on Passage.” Make it official, lest the creature interfere. “I don’t see any—” what had it called the ditch? “—courseways between here and the mountain.” Or streams, for that matter. Which raised an interesting question. “How did you get past them?”

  A bark. “It is the Hard Ones who fear me.” The Tikitik rose to its feet. Its concave torso was wrapped in paired bands of cloth, the same pale dull color as its skin. The bands supported bags on what would be waist and hips for an Om’ray, as well as a sheath. From that, the creature drew a long—familiar—blade, which it attached with a twist to a staff. “Are you hungry, Om’ray?”

  Without waiting for his answer, the Tikitik strode over to the rock hunters. Enris was astonished to see the entire pile start to quiver. The movement was slow and halting, more an indecisive landslide than purposeful flight. The greatest speed was attained by those falling off the top, who managed to roll and bounce a fair distance from the rest. Once on flat ground, they leaned until they tumbled over, stopped to become rocks again—as if to fool any watcher—then leaned and tumbled once more.

  By
day, he decided in disgust, the things posed no conceivable threat to anyone or thing able to walk. By truenight, asleep or trapped—that was another matter. Could there be a defense? Despite his aching head, he stood to get a better view.

  The Tikitik used no stealth. It selected a rock the size of Enris’ pack and turned it over using the butt of its staff. The rest kept rolling away. For some reason unsatisfied—or to torment the rock—the Tikitik pushed it over again, then held it in place with its foot. “Come,” it ordered, bobbing its head twice. “See.”

  Keeping a wary eye on the retreating rocks, Enris joined the gray Tikitik. Up close, the creature smelled like unwashed clothes and sweetpie. It tapped a spot on the rock with the blade of its weapon. “There. Hard Ones have formidable armor, but everything breathes.”

  Enris had to lean close to see what the Tikitik had found. It was a deep crevice, the width of his little finger. Unlike a natural crack in rock, this curved in a sinuous line twice the length of his hand, never changing in size.

  “Find the midpoint,” the Tikitik said, doing so with another tap. He held the blade tips up. The metal was plain, but otherwise the tool was identical to the one currently inside Enris’ coat, with one hooked tip longer than the other. “This severs the organ that controls breathing. Thus.”

  The “Hard One” struggled, but as its effort consisted of a grinding push against the ground, easily countered by the pressure of the Tikitik’s foot, it appeared helpless. Reversing the blade, the Tikitik plunged it deep into the crevice at an angle, then brought it straight with a quick powerful motion. There was a loud whistle—Enris couldn’t tell if the Hard One screamed in pain or if this was its final exhalation—then the “rock” sagged into itself.

  In death, the Hard One appeared more alive, a bag made to look like a rock, rather than stone itself. He dared touch it. The “skin” felt like the sand sacs he and his father used for fine polishing, rough and cold.

  The Tikitik barked. “What waits inside is of greater value to one on Passage.” It levered the blade sideways and the “bag” split open. “Especially a hungry one.”

  There was nothing remotely appetizing in the mass of green, black, and glistening yellow that spilled out on the ground. And the smell! Enris covered his nose with his sleeve and stared at the Tikitik. “You’d eat that?”

  It poked and stirred the remains, adding considerably to the smell and mess. Enris was about to protest when the Tikitik withdrew the blade, a fist-sized lump of blue caught on the hooked tip. “I’d eat this. A delicacy, foolish Om’ray. Only found in the young ones.” It thrust the lump at Enris and wiggled it suggestively.

  “Thank you, but I’ve food of my own,” the Tuana said hastily. Tikitik had taken Aryl prisoner and force-fed her. She’d described the experience vividly; they hadn’t used their hands.

  “As you wish.” The Tikitik shook the “delicacy” from its blade. It landed with a sodden thud among the oozing remains. “You should move,” it advised, walking back across the shallow line of ditch and sitting exactly where it had sat before. “The Hard Ones find their own impossible to resist.”

  It was true. Their almost imperceptible roll to escape had become an almost imperceptible roll to return. Because of their greater size, each roll moved the larger of the Hard Ones farther, so they soon outdistanced the rest.

  Soon? Metal, Enris judged, cooled faster. Being thirsty as well as hungry—if not for a blue lump—he left the rocks to their business and returned to his pack. The Tikitik’s small eyes roved about on their cones; its large pair followed Enris, an unwelcome attention the Tuana chose to ignore.

  After a cautious drink from his dwindling supply, he undid the ties holding the waterproofed flap, then opened the top to rummage through his supplies. His eyebrows rose as he pulled out a tight coil of rope, rope he hadn’t packed. The lengths were few enough. He’d taken nothing the exiles might need.

  Except himself.

  His fingers found something small and soft attached to the rope. A lock of brown hair, cleverly tied in the shape of an Om’ray. Keeping his back to the Tikitik, Enris unhooked it with care, then tucked it safely inside the pouch hanging around his neck, with the old firebox and odd wafer.

  No mystery who’d done this for him, who’d given him Passage gifts as a family should.

  There was more: Grona travel bread—a large bite of which promptly went in his mouth; one of the Sona blankets; other Sona supplies: rokly, swimmer meat; last, but not least, a Yena longknife.

  He recognized the nicks along its fine edge; not that Aryl would give him anyone’s but her own. It was an admirable tool—and weapon. At that thought, Enris put away the longknife, grabbed the bag of rokly, and turned to face his companion. He sat, then reached into his coat for the blade he’d found with the bones. He balanced it on one knee. “Rokly?” he offered.

  The small eyes snapped forward so all four could stare. At the blade, he noticed with satisfaction, not the morsel he held out. The Tikitik bobbed its head upward, twice. “A shame Om’ray have forgotten how to read,” it said finally.

  Forgotten? Nothing this creature said was by accident. It must know Om’ray Adepts read in the Cloisters. Heart racing, Enris ran his finger over the symbols. “Is that why the Oud destroyed Sona? Because that Clan let everyone, not just Adepts, learn to read and write?”

  A too-thin arm lifted languidly, two fingers pointed where the dead Hard One had been. Had been, Enris saw with a lurch of his stomach, because the remains were now beneath a slowly shoving pile of its own kind. “The Oud are equally tasteless and unsophisticated,” pronounced the Tikitik, lowering its arm. “They don’t care about those who read. They don’t themselves. They claim their flesh remembers.”

  Enris pressed. “The Sona are gone because the Oud reshaped this valley. Why?”

  A bark and a sly dip of its head. “The Sona are not gone.”

  He knew this feeling: it was the one watching Aryl and other Yena gambol across the beams of roofs and up vertical cliffs gave him. A dizzy, fingerbreadth from disaster, about-to-fall-into-an-abyss, dry-mouthed, disbelieving terror. With a sincere dollop of frustration. They never listened to him. Stay on the ground. Stay away from the Oud. Don’t stay here.

  “Are they in danger?” Enris didn’t recognize his own voice in the raw, ragged demand. “Are they?! Answer me!”

  The mouth appendages writhed as if tasting the air. “An unusual concern for one on Passage. What are you called, Om’ray?”

  His hands itched to tie a knot in that long neck, to strangle its smug superiority. He clenched them around the blade instead. “Enris Mendolar,” he ground out between his teeth. “Are they in danger?”

  “A Tuana…so far from home. Curious. I enjoy curious things.” The gray Tikitik touched its fingertips to the wrapping on its wrist. “You may call me Thought Traveler. As for Sona’s risk?” Its head stretched forward, eyes swiveled to stare. “They are safer than you, Enris Mendolar.”

  Chapter 9

  “ENRIS?”

  His name died on her lips. Aryl sat up and pushed free of the softness that covered her body. He wasn’t here. She shook her head. The remnant of a dream, she decided. Not the useful kind.

  As for here…where was she?

  Oh, she knew where she was relative to Sona and Grona, although their remoteness made her inner sense uneasy. She had only the haziest memory of their final steps, but Marcus hadn’t brought her far from the Cloisters. Aryl swung her legs over the side of what was a bed, solid and raised on a platform, moving in silence despite the snores from the other side of the room. Room?

  Daylight streamed through an abundance of too-small windows: narrow rectangles set head-high in the walls that angled into the smooth domed ceiling, a pair on one of two closed doors. Everything else—walls, ceiling, doors, and furnishings—was of a dull white material. She’d seen such before. The strangers used it in their more permanent structures.

  The place was a mess. Every possible wall
space supported shelves cluttered with devices, tools, and clear jars of what appeared to be dirt. Counters ran beneath, crowded with boxes. The boxes had buttons and controls; some had screens displaying patterns of flickering light. The floor was a maze of the white crates the strangers used to carry supplies in their aircar, most empty and on their sides. Either the Human had been here a long while, or he’d had help who unpacked in a hurry.

  Here for a rest, was he? Hardly.

  The Human—a lump under fluffy blankets—slept on a second bed platform. There was a third suspended above it. She looked up. Another above hers. Two more farther along, these folded against the wall.

  Alone, was he? For now, perhaps.

  Aryl stood, finding herself in her still-damp tunic and leg wraps. Her boots and belt—and the Human’s—lay on the floor with his coat, carelessly dropped. Her knife…there it was. On one of the counters, sharp point to the wall. Not so careless.

  She went to the door with windows and looked out, relieved to see stunted nekis stalks and a too-neat path between them. The Cloisters was that way.

  The other door led to another pleasant surprise. It opened into a ’fresher—the one stranger technology she’d gladly add to her life.

  Sorely tempted, Aryl looked back at the Human. What she could see appeared asleep. Besides—when would she have another chance?

  She stepped inside the stall and fastened the door, shedding her filthy clothes with relief. Her hairnet came apart as she tugged it from her hair, hair thoroughly tangled and, from the feel, mud-encrusted. Shouldn’t it have been cleaned by the waterfall? Water…her pockets! Aryl grabbed her tunic to check. Her Grona fire starter was gone, but the headdress was still safely tucked in its pocket, if filthy. The rokly had swollen into an unappetizing mass, coated with dirt. She scooped it out and dropped it on the floor.

  The Speaker’s Pendant thudded against her chest, cold and heavy, as she straightened. So it hadn’t been a dream. She left it around her neck.

  Aryl tapped a square in the wall, and warm, fragrant foam sprayed her from every side, head to toe. She gathered handfuls and rubbed it on her clothing. It couldn’t hurt. Foam collected on the lump of swollen rokly, but didn’t wash it away. The device wasn’t perfect, she thought, amused.