Rift in the Sky

by Julie E. Czerneda

  She looked at the Grona Adepts. “Every name. By truenight.”

  Oran’s hair flailed, but she didn’t argue.

  “Everyone to see this place and understand what you would do here.”

  Hoyon opened his mouth, then closed it.

  “And if you succeed—anyone who wishes dreams with you.”

  That was too much. “Only Adepts dream to order!” Hoyon shouted.

  “Then,” Aryl told him calmly, “when you correct the records, make everyone an Adept.”

  She concentrated and pushed herself through the M’hir before they could react.

  Chapter 2

  “ENRIS D’SUD SARC.” Enris stretched out his long legs, put his hands behind his head, and grinned. “Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  What she thought, Aryl told herself grimly, she’d keep to herself. She concentrated on sharpening her knife. There’d been almost no reaction to her news about Oran and Hoyon, and the Cloisters. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be. Sona’s Om’ray tended to consider before they spoke. Meanwhile, Deran and Menasel, along with Bern and Kran, carried water. Gijs escaped that duty to finish his new home’s roof under the baleful eye of his Chosen. Oran and Hoyon remained at the Cloisters to prepare.

  Whatever that meant.

  Seru, bent over her sewing, glanced through a restless curl of black hair. “Seru di Parth.” Her nose wrinkled. “Doesn’t make me an Adept.”

  That deep chuckle. “What I want to know is when we get our robes. There’d best be one my size.”

  Aryl put down her knife and tossed an empty mug at his head. It disappeared mid arc.

  “ ‘A waste of good dishes!’ ” The Tuana’s excellent imitation of Husni’s frequent complaint to those practicing their Talent made her lips quirk.

  “You could have caught it,” she pointed out. To Seru, “The Cloisters answers to names it knows. Don’t ask me how. But only those with the “di” of Adepts are allowed into certain areas. Only they are free to learn through dreams.” She had no more desire than Seru to be an Adept and none to live within the Cloisters, but to learn? Her breath quickened. To be able to read and write . . . to discover the past of this place . . . “We could become so much wiser,” Aryl said earnestly. “All of us.”

  “Not all.” Morla entered the Meeting Hall, shook dust from her jerkin, then took a seat at the table with them. She gestured gratitude as Enris poured her a mug of water. Her still willful white hair was tamed by a tight net. That hair and those wide-set gray eyes were Sarc traits; her diminutive size and clever hands? Pure Kessa’at. She’d been an outspoken Councillor of Yena, leader of her family, before the betrayal. At Sona, she plied her first trade again, woodworker, and rarely offered her opinion on anything else. Until now.

  “Why not?” Aryl asked.

  “There’s a reason Adepts are selected for their Power, why they are tested. The teaching dreams are risky. Few Om’ray have the strength to endure them.”

  “According to the Adepts themselves. Convenient.” She gestured apology for her harsh tone—the elderly Om’ray didn’t deserve it. “We’ve dreamed. Seru and I. We were fine.”

  A shiver of dread. No doubt of the source. Seru had been sent dreams of Sona’s death, full of screams and pain. A warning not to approach.

  “They were useful dreams,” Aryl insisted. “We’ll be careful, of course, but—”

  WE?? Enris’ sending made her wince. You mean to try this?

  Don’t you?

  Shields slammed between them. Outwardly, her Chosen appeared preoccupied with the packs hung from the rafters. Perhaps, she grumbled to herself, he searched for the mug he’d pushed. Given his Power, it was probably in Grona, if it left the M’hir at all.

  So much they didn’t know.

  “The ceremony will be a tenth after truenight,” Aryl said aloud. The dark wasn’t yet a friend, but it would hide the disappearance of Sona from any non-Om’ray observers. They’d ’port to the Council Chamber, the stronger taking the weaker. There, Oran and Hoyon would add their names to the records.

  For Husni, their keeper of tradition, had insisted there be a proper ceremony. In Yena, there would be flowers and dresel cake once a baby received its name, or a Chosen arrival was granted his new one. Tuana and Grona—no surprise—believed in feasts. Tai sud Licor, from Amna, spoke wistfully of boiled swimmers and dancing.

  “About that.” Morla leaned forward on her elbows, eyes somber. Both wrists were wrapped with colorful cloth—a habit she’d kept after the broken one healed. Many of Sona’s new Om’ray had taken to the harmless fashion, that warmed arms and left hands bare. The Yena had adopted Tuana-style boots. The Tuana and Grona Chosen liked Yena hairnets, except for Oran. So quickly, they became different from other Clans. “Being together, not working for once. We could ring a bell for Mauro.”

  Every Cloisters contained deep-throated bells; by tradition, one was rung for each death. Aryl glanced at Enris. He pursed his lips and gave that small headshake the Human used for “no.” Their habit now. As for Seru . . .

  Her cousin hunched over her work, applying needle and thread with unusual force considering she sewed baby clothes.

  Mauro Lorimar had come to Sona with his fellow Tuana, bringing with him a dreadful, un-Om’ray joy in the pain of others. At home, he’d led a group against Enris, beating him severely. Here, he’d tried to Join Seru, dragging her mind into his madness.

  He’d deserved his fate, Aryl thought grimly. As did Seru, happily Joined to Ezgi, once of Serona.

  Morla waited, the image of patience. She hadn’t, Aryl realized abruptly, come to suggest this on her own. “Haxel sent you.” The First Scout’s quick knife had saved Aryl, trapped in the M’hir by Mauro’s attempt to Join with her instead. No Om’ray was known to have killed another before, though to be fair, Mauro had hardly seemed one of them by the end. She shuddered inwardly. “She shouldn’t regret what she did.”

  “That one?” Morla’s face wrinkled. “Haxel’s only regret is that she didn’t move faster.”

  Enris dropped his feet to the wooden floor. “Rorn,” he declared.

  Haxel’s Chosen? “Why?”

  “Haven’t you noticed? He’s her conscience.”

  “It might help Menasel.” They all looked at Seru, who blushed. “Mauro was her cousin,” she went on, determined, if hesitant. “It might help—everyone. We’ve done nothing to mark the passing of Tuana.”

  Aryl was jolted by grief. Enris gestured apology as he tightened his shields, his eyes hooded. She laid her fingers on his arm. We are one, she sent gently. Never fear to share your pain.

  “How can we ring bells for Tuana?” Morla asked. “We don’t know—I’m sorry, Enris—but we don’t know how many died there, or who.” She gestured apology, but went on, “Surely the survivors have rung their own bells.”

  “This isn’t about their grief, but ours,” Seru insisted, her voice growing firm. Whether pregnancy or a blissful Choice, something had brought out the strength Aryl had known lay in her cousin. “You can reach that far, Aryl. You can tell us who lives. Then we’ll know who to mourn.”

  No one had asked this of her. Not even Enris, who looked at her with sudden hope.

  An Om’ray who left his Clan was as if dead to that Clan. It had always been so. UnChosen took Passage to find Choice and a new home, or die in the attempt. The family and friends they had in the past never spoke of them again. It was the way of the world.

  A way her Talent could change forever. Aryl swallowed. Is this what you want?

  Not for myself. His eyes fixed on hers. I have my new life. But for Worin’s sake. For the others. They didn’t choose to leave their families. They should know what became of them.

  Aryl’s fingers strayed to the metal bracelet she wore, turned it on her wrist, explored the smooth ripples that mirrored a mountain stream. It was of Tuana; Enris had made it there before he’d left. Before they’d met. “Stay with me,” she said out loud, then closed her e
yes.

  She relaxed, let herself be attracted to the glow of other Om’ray, moved past Sona’s cluster of life to touch Grona’s, moved farther and ignored all between, until . . .

  Tuana.

  Having reached the here-I-am, she relaxed further to allow each glow to become who-I-am . . . Names filled her mind . . . more than names. Identities, full and rich and connected one to the other. No Om’ray existed alone, whole or Lost. Their bonds were threads of light through the darkness.

  Too few.

  Enris. With her. She shared her awareness of Tuana’s Om’ray; in return, she couldn’t escape his despair and anguish. She took his pain into herself, soothed it, helped him past it. Showed him.

  There. Mendolar. A connection that stretched, however tenuous, to him and back. Other names. Serona. S’udlaat. Edut. Licor. Annk. Other connections. Faint, too faint. But real.

  If she let herself, she could trace them between every living Om’ray, see the world’s shape as it truly was, know her place in it.

  With an effort, Aryl shrank her awareness to her own body and opened her eyes.

  “Dama Mendolar,” Enris said wonderingly. “I should have known. My grandmother,” he clarified for the rest of them. “It’s not the first reshaping she’s survived.”

  “Could you—?” Aryl found herself unable to say it.

  Enris seemed to fill the room as he rose to his feet. Only his uncle, Galen sud Serona, rivaled him in size. “I have the names of the living. I’ll tell the rest.” Then he paused to gaze down at Seru. “But there aren’t enough bells for the dead.”

  In the end, Sona’s bells were silent. Instead, when everyone had gathered within the Cloisters’ Council Chamber, dressed in their finest—or at least cleanest—clothes, the Tuana stepped upon the raised dais. Murmurs and sendings stopped. The dark of truenight pressed above the gray dirt piled outside the windows. It reflected the glowstrip that banded the ceiling, so rivers of light appeared beyond the Tuana, meeting at some unimaginable distance.

  Enris stood in the midst of his new Clan, at the center of his old, the focus of all eyes. He was magnificent, Aryl thought, holding in a rush of pride that had no place here and now. Straight-shouldered, serious, with a lift to his head that gathered attention and kept it. Nothing of uncertainty or youth. Everything of strength.

  “This truenight, we will give our names to Sona. So doing, in the way of our people, we become Sona and leave our past Clans behind.” His deep voice carried through the room. Through their bones. “Yet we need not.”

  Naryn stepped forward. Though freed, her glorious red hair cloaked her shoulders in calm, obedient waves. In her hands was a stack of the metal plates Adepts used for their records. Enris gestured. “Here are the names of those who died in the reshaping of Tuana. We who remember them as the living ask that they be given to Sona with ours. We ask that they not be forgotten with our deaths, but remain here to touch the future. Forever real.”

  To keep the past. A concept he’d learned from the Human.

  The others hadn’t expected this. Aryl lowered her shields and tasted their puzzlement. They weren’t unwilling; they simply didn’t understand. How could the past stay real?

  Something was rising in the M’hir. Could the others feel it? Aryl wondered. Surely they must.

  Then . . . like a flood . . . memories burst into her mind. Vivid, crisp.

  ... A roadway. Buildings of wood and colored metal and a kind of block that wasn’t stone. Strong, sturdy, elegant shapes. A Meeting Hall with stairlike benches that rose to the ceiling.

  Faces. Voices. Om’ray she’d never met or known. Hands busy at work. Metal melting and flowing into shapes. Fields that stretched to the horizon. Immense machines, blades slicing through stalks.

  Voices. Faces.

  The smell of baking. Something sweet and fragrant. Her mouth watered.

  Laughter, ease. A life so different from that of Yena she felt unmade. Stars overhead. Glows in a tunnel. Ramps and twists and beams of heavy wood.

  Everywhere, life. People. Connected and whole. They had names . . .

  Names she could hear because all around her they were being spoken aloud, as if in greeting. Her mouth was moving, too.

  The memories faded . . . the echoes died.

  The Om’ray of Sona stared at one another, then at Enris.

  There was a sheen of sweat on his face. The sharing had come with effort. Beko Serona wept silently beside him. Stryn Licor’s daughters supported their mother. The Tuana were shaken, if triumphant.

  Naryn started, then smiled as the metal plates lifted from her hands, rose into the air over their heads, then came to the outstretched hands of Fon Kessa’at. The unChosen hugged them to his chest, as if relieved by his own control. His friend, Cader Sarc, squeezed his shoulder, looking askance at Veca and Tilip, Fon’s parents. They merely smiled at him. So, Aryl thought with approval, the younger generation understood.

  “We’ll enter them into the record,” Oran said quietly. Aryl.

  Ah, yes. The original reason for the clothes and clean hair, for the rokly cakes cooling on the tables of rough wood they’d had to bring with them, for the tables themselves. She took her place on the dais, the Tuana quietly stepping aside. When Enris would have gone with them, she captured his hand in hers but didn’t look at him.

  “This truenight,” Aryl told her people, consciously following the pattern he’d set, “we give our names to Sona.” Smiles. A sense of relaxation. This, they’d expected. “Each and every one of you will be shown how to open the Cloisters’ doors.”

  Not expected. She hadn’t prepared the rest for this.

  A few exchanged looks. Husni’s mouth hung open. Haxel spoke. “Only Adepts open a Cloisters. We’re not Adepts.”

  “You don’t need to be.” Hoyon’s face was impassive, but Oswa flinched. Aryl paused to frown at him. “Secrets,” she said pointedly, “have no value here. We are too few, too far from any other safety. Sona’s Cloisters must open for anyone. The outer doors are a simple trick of Power, easily done by anyone whose name is recorded here.”

  Or by an unknown bearing a child conceived in Sona, if she had Power enough to impress the Cloisters; a less-than-tactful speculation of Oran’s Aryl preferred not to mention.

  “The inner doors and levels open in the same way, but only to those bearing the ‘di.’ ” She paused. “So all of us will.”

  Enris had preened, however insincerely. Seru had been dismayed. Haxel frowned thoughtfully. “A change.”

  The words were profound. The Agreement that kept the peace between the races of Cersi forbade change. Yet nothing stayed the same. Not and survived. An unseen ripple of dread passed through them all. Could they taste it?

  Aryl squeezed her Chosen’s hand, then released it, taking her Speaker’s Pendant in the same still-warm palm. “A change,” she agreed, her voice ringing. “For the better. For our future.” She could see it all, clear and certain. Could they? “We claim a new closeness with one another. We claim the same rights and responsibilities as each other. We refuse to let Power divide us! We are all Sona.”

  “Sona!” Eyes gleamed. Shouts echoed throughout the hall. “Sona!”

  Words slipped into her mind, heavy with conviction. Now who’s the fool?

  When Aryl looked for Naryn, she’d vanished into the jubilant crowd.

  “A full fist and we’re still finding new rooms.” Haxel perched on a step, taking a cup with an absent gesture of gratitude. The morning was crisp and they kept a pot of sombay—a gift from Marcus—warm by the watch fire. She squinted at Aryl through whorls of steam. “Empty ones.”

  “Oran—”

  The First Scout’s grin whitened the scar that ran from eye to jaw. “Ah. Our illustrious Keeper. Dreamed anything of use yet?”

  Aryl grimaced. According to Hoyon, his niece—the relationship abruptly worth announcing at every opportunity—had indeed been accepted by Sona’s Cloisters. For what good it did. “No. They tell me it’
s normal for a new Keeper to have trouble sorting the dreams, to learn fine control—”

  “Empty rooms and an empty head.” Haxel snorted. “We should let your Human help search.” A sly look. “I’d like to see what he’d find.”

  Not the first time the First Scout had made such a suggestion. She should have realized nothing would keep those too-keen eyes from studying Marcus Bowman and his camp. Aryl stiffened, prepared to argue.

  With a warmer smile, Haxel raised her cup. “Don’t worry. I know better than to trouble peaceful neighbors. Speaking of which,” all innocence, “when’s your next meeting with the Oud?”

  Nothing innocent at all. So far, the most successful outcome of Aryl’s negotiation with the Oud had been their absence. She’d insisted they refrain from tunneling beneath Sona itself, and remove their existing tunnel entrance on the far side of the river. There hadn’t been a Visitation since, which was fine with Sona’s Speaker. “I did tell them to stay away,” she pointed out.

  “Helping me sleep through truenight.” Unlikely. Haxel brought up a booted foot and rested her arm on one knee. Her gray hair was always quiet, as if cowed by her will. A secret she’d like to learn, Aryl thought as hers tested its net. But the long-ago Sona crafted well. A larger version, Enris averred with his usual tact, would hold a Tikitik esask. A shame it left the fall down her back free to express itself. “There are always,” the First Scout mused, “Oud around the Stranger camp.”

  Visit Marcus? Aryl did her best to look serious, but doubted she fooled the other Om’ray. Between her duties as Speaker and work in the fields—and his frequent visitors—there’d been too few chances to see her Human friend. For he was that, a friend.

  Sure enough, Haxel drained her cup and showed it to her, empty. “Just don’t forget to ask about the river.”

  Sona’s road to the waterfall showed little signs of use. Haxel and her scouts patrolled the valley, but stayed to the shadowed walls. She had four, now: their Looker, Weth Teerac—di Teerac, Aryl corrected to herself—and Aryl’s uncle Ael d’sud Sarc were of Yena, along with two Tuana Runners: the di Licor sisters, Josel and Netta. The Runners, according to Haxel, showed rare aptitude for the work. Enris, amused, thought it more likely the way their remarkable dappled skin matched the local rock. No others could be spared, not yet. Their patrols were also hunting expeditions. Being Yena, Haxel deemed it prudent to keep the valley clear of large predators and free of ambush. The hook-claw that buried itself in loose dirt was easily found, if less easily killed. The rock hunters?