“Aryl not afraid, please.”
She’d seen remembered images of the reclusive Oud, knew they followed the Agreement, communicated through a Speaker with the other races, allowed Passage across their lands. She knew little more— had cared to know nothing more about them. What could they matter to a Yena who would live her life high in the canopy? She would never meet an Oud.
The Carasian had. More than met— if she understood what it said, the strangers had learned the language spoken by all on Cersi from the Oud.
Aryl sank back down on her too-solid chair, in a building of strangers, on a platform in the middle of the Lake of Fire, and realized anything was possible now. “I’m not afraid,” she said as calmly as she could. “Tikitik and Om’ray use words as I do. The Oud—” What had Costa said? “— the Oud use as few words as possible. They can be difficult to understand.” She thought that a tactful hint to the other.
“Difficult? Aryl kind.” Janex pounded the table, threatening their plates. “Oud difficult, us. Confusing talk. Now we difficult, Aryl? Sorry,” this said with what appeared a sincere regret. “Rules I hunt. Rules for words. Oud use no rules.”
She had to smile. “You’re a Speaker, aren’t you?”
“Speaker, me?” Janex’s eyes milled around briefly. That note of amusement was back in its voice. “Good, is. Janex Triad Third. Recorder and comtech. Talk, talk, talk. Pilip, Triad Second.” The stick-stranger looked up at this, strands of blue hanging from its mouth, then muttered something unpleasant-sounding through that mouthful before looking away again. “Janex is Carasian. Pilip is Trant. Better?”
“Better,” affirmed Aryl, trying to fix these new names in memory. At the rate they were multiplying, she feared it was hopeless. She didn’t have the Carasian’s obvious Talent with words. “Marcus is Triad First,” she said, proud to have remembered that. Whatever it meant. A rank, she guessed. Like the scouts.
“Good!” The Carasian clicked its big claw. “Pilip scantech. Finder. Marcus, Triad First, Analyst.”
Different names, an entirely different— if she understood correctly— set of words. Their technology— and the Oud involved? She didn’t think Thought Traveler would be pleased, not pleased at all. As for Yena Council? Aryl decided not to think about them.
“Are there others here?” she indicated the room. “Oud?”
The giant creature’s head rocked from side to side. “Oud, no. Others?” She thought it hesitated, as if it didn’t want to reveal how many they were. Aryl wasn’t sure why the answer would matter. “Others.” This with a large claw raised overhead. “Others.” The claw pointed through the window.
That wasn’t helpful. Aryl decided to assume they came from somewhere else— from exactly where being a question she wasn’t in a hurry to have answered. “You’re on Passage?”
“Understand not.”
Already a habit to correct it. “I don’t understand.”
“ ‘I don’t understand’ Passage.”
Aryl leaned back in her seat, more thoughtful than shocked. “When Om’ray go from place to place,” she mimed walking with her hands, “it is called Passage.”
“Aryl is on Passage.”
No, she’d been kidnapped and dropped into the lake to spy on them, but as this explanation couldn’t lead to anything but harder questions, Aryl settled for, “I’m looking for something.”
“Seekers, we also,” announced Marcus, sitting beside her. “Food good?”
“I liked the— sombay,” Aryl said, finally recalling the name of the drink. “Seekers.” Were they scouts of some kind? “What do you seek?”
“Show Aryl?” The Human jumped back to his feet.
All three strangers were looking at her now, Marcus with an expression that, on an Om’ray face, would be hopeful. Why?
There was, Aryl sighed inwardly, only one way to find out. Maybe she’d find the Tikitik’s answer at the same time.
She rose to her feet, her new boots making a faint shhhh on the floor. “Show me.”
Chapter 22
ARYL ...
Aryl didn’t stop walking at the inner touch, but her attention was no longer on her surroundings. She’d been waiting for privacy to contact her mother. To be honest, she’d been waiting for courage too.
It seemed Taisal could no longer wait, so Aryl opened her mind to the other, making the link. Mother.
Her mother’s sending was colored by emotion; a residue of anger mingled with concern. What has happened? Are you all right?
Mother . . . we’re not alone here! As if forming the words made them true, Aryl could barely contain her fear, torn by the urge to somehow look beyond their link into the seething darkness. What— who— might she find?
Almost scorn. We’re never alone here, daughter. This is the hollow between minds, where the dead linger and the Lost hide. Don’t be afraid. They’re harmless unless you follow or answer them. Don’t look for anyone. Those here . . . they’re no longer Om’ray. They are shadows. Nothing more.
The voice of experience? Aryl shuddered. I won’t. I won’t.
Tell me where you are.
With the strangers. Aryl sent her view of the lake and platform.
Something hard gripped her around the waist, shattering her concentration and the link.
“What do!??”
Aryl blinked and found herself suspended in the air in one of the Carasian’s great claws. Its eyes moved aside to reveal two knifelike jaws as long as her arms. Aryl squeezed her eyes closed and tried not to scream. “What do!?” it roared at her again.
“Careful, Janex!” Marcus cautioned. Aryl peered down at him, hoping for rescue, but he frowned at her, not the Carasian, before uttering a string of his own words.
Janex, its focus never leaving Aryl, answered— mostly— in real words. “Grist! Aryl grist different. Better now.” The last word was calmer, as if Janex had taken time to think something through and been relieved. Sure enough, the claw eased Aryl back to the floor.
She smacked the claw the instant it released her. “Don’t do that!” she scolded, as furious as she’d been scared. This was the stranger she’d almost trusted. Now? Aryl backed against the wall, her arms tight around her waist, though it hadn’t hurt her.
It could have. She’d underestimated the strength of that unusual body. And maybe something else. Had it somehow detected her connection to Taisal? Aryl tried opening her inner sense, to feel anything from the Carasian’s mind.
Chaos!
“Ouch!” she exclaimed, retreating behind the tightest possible shields, her eyes wide.
Janex, if it were possible for a creature built like a machine, looked smug. “Grist, me,” it said. “Good smell, Aryl.”
Aryl sniffed cautiously. The fresh lake, something musky from Pilip’s direction. “I don’t understand.”
Marcus looked from her to his companion. “I don’t understand,” he agreed.
“Problem, not.” Janex waved a jaunty claw. “Go on. Show Aryl.”
Aryl, equally willing to avoid the topic of what grist smelled like, or what it was, continued walking.
They took her to the roof, up a winding solid ramp that suited the Carasian’s bulk and maneuverability, though it wasted too much of the building’s interior to Aryl’s way of thinking. Pilip, on the other hand, clung desperately to a railing until they were again on a flat surface. She tried not to pity it.
The roof itself was cluttered with more of the plain white boxes, but most of these bore some kind of symbol, the lines sharper and more angular than the Tikitik’s. A few larger boxes had doors, implying they were more than boxes, but these weren’t, apparently, what she was here to be shown.
Around a pile of loosely coiled ropes— Marcus and his companions were, Aryl judged, remarkably sloppy for all their technology— she found herself at a step that led to a raised solid circle. Around its rim were six identical stalks, plantlike in that they were topped by something else. The something else was like a box, but thi
s time with metal twigs and balls sticking out at all angles.
Not decoration. Aryl was reminded of the poles that protruded from the stalk of the Cloisters.
There were obstacles in the way: folded white petal-things that they had to walk over or around. Aryl bent to touch one. It looked like window gauze, but felt hard and strong.
“Cover,” Janex explained, doing a fair job with its smaller claws to pantomime the petals rising up to protect the circle and its stalks.
Aryl . . .?
Seeing the immediate swivel of eyes her way, Aryl sent a hasty later . . . then made herself smile at the Carasian. This could become, she warned herself, a problem. “Cover,” she nodded.
“Aryl,” Marcus called from atop the circle. Pilip followed him, going at once to one of the metal stalks. Aryl stepped up, feeling the floor shake slightly as the Carasian did the same. The Trant made a scolding noise. Odd. Why would this floor shake, and no other?
Aryl controlled her curiosity. Marcus was eagerly waving her to one of the stalks. When she came closer, cautiously, he gestured. “Seeker. Look.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant to look at the lake surrounding them, or at what appeared to be a larger version of the colored panel of the bioscanner device. Marcus, guessing why she hesitated, indicated the panel. “Watch.”
He spoke to Pilip in their words; the Trant did something to its stalk. Aryl jumped as a round disk rose from amid the mass of boxes on the roof to hover directly over them. She craned her neck to study it, recognizing features she’d captured in her drawing. The device from the Harvest!
Her triumph faded. Thought Traveler had been right; it had been the strangers. She had its proof. But knowing that wasn’t enough, not anymore. Not to her. They had names. Marcus, Janex, Pilip. They had a place, here. Above all, they had a purpose— and whatever else, it wasn’t harmless. Those who had died, she reminded herself grimly, had had names, too.
This close, she could see inside the device. Its components were suspended within a clear material; none had a function she could guess.
It floated away, over the roof railing, to hover in midair above the lake. It seemed to wait for instructions.
“How does it fly?” Aryl asked.
Marcus shrugged, another familiar movement. “Pilip?”
The Trant glanced at her from its stalk, pressing its lips shut in a thin line. Meaning no, in any language, Aryl thought. She scowled back.
“It is tool,” rumbled Janex. “Seeker tool.”
The Tikitik wanted her to connect the strangers to the device. Much better, Aryl thought, to learn why it had been at the Harvest in the first place. “What does it seek?” she asked. Her voice was strained to her own ears; none of them seemed to notice. After her initial reaction to the bioscanner, maybe they expected her to be uncomfortable around any of their technology.
She didn’t care about their opinion.
“Look. Here, look.”
“Look here,” she said and obeyed Marcus’ summons to direct her eyes at the panel. “What—” Aryl closed her mouth, concentrating on what she saw.
Instead of blank, now the panel was a window showing this roof. She considered the view— too high, too far— and turned to point at the hovering device. “From that?” she asked.
The Human looked astonished. Aryl frowned at him. What did he think? That an Om’ray, used to seeing images from other minds, couldn’t grasp something so obvious? “It looks this way,” she told him dryly, gesturing her meaning. “I understand.”
How it looked was probably as secret as how it flew, but now she was more concerned with the possibilities. It was a spy. That was clear. What wasn’t clear was why it would spy on the Harvest— why it would interfere.
A breeze ruffled her hair against her cheeks as she looked at Marcus, at a loss. How to ask such questions?
“Aryl, where?” This with a gesture to the panel. “Look.”
It was a place to start, though she was unsure what he wanted. This time, the image was of a distant shoreline, moving past quickly. A quick glance at the device showed her it was now higher and had turned. She looked back at the panel. “Can it go closer?” she asked. Pilip muttered something, but the shore leaped toward her.
Not where she’d ridden the osst— that was immediately apparent. This must be the far side of the Lake of Fire, beyond their view. Lifeless stone rose in great steps from the water. At the top? Aryl blinked in amazement. The top was a different land altogether, flat as far as the image showed, covered with an even growth of brown hair. Not hair, she realized in the next instant, grasping at the distances the device so effortlessly revealed. Plants— all the same plants, with thin leaves that moved like water in the wind. “Oud,” she said. Her inner sense confirmed the direction of the device had turned. “Pana,” she pronounced, pointing away from the panel. She shaded her eyes with one hand, able to see only a line on the horizon, below building clouds.
“ ‘Pana?’ ” repeated Marcus, looking where she indicated. “Pana, Aryl?”
“No.” She snorted with exasperation. “That’s Pana.” A stab of her finger. “Amna.” Aryl turned and pointed again. “Rayna, Vyna.” She continued to turn and point, “Grona.” Back almost to Pana. “Tuana.” Then, with an ache in her heart, she faced home. “Yena. I’m from Yena. There.”
The strangers appeared paralyzed, as if she’d grown another head.
“What’s wrong?” she asked finally. Had they no idea of the shape of the world?
“Vy, Ray, So, Gro, Ne, Tua, Ye, Pa, Am,” Marcus said, quickly and easily, for some reason dropping the final half of each clan name while keeping them in order by place and adding two of his words. He was smiling, not at her, but at the other strangers. He continued, his voice growing stronger. “Nor, Xro, Fa.” More words she didn’t know.
“Vy-NA, Ray-NA!” this a triumphant bellow from the Carasian. Even Pilip appeared cheerful for once, its twig fingers wiggling in the air and eyes bright.
She must have shown her bewilderment, for when Marcus looked at her, his smile faded. “Sorry, am. You don’t understand. Seekers, we. Seek these words: Vy-na, Ray-na, all. Thank you.” He made the gesture of gratitude, imperfectly, but close enough. “Thank you.”
If they were sane, something on which she reserved judgment, then they had found something in the clan names of greater meaning than an Om’ray knew. But if Cersi wasn’t their world— Aryl shivered despite her new, warm stranger-shirt— how could that be?
“What is?” Pilip indicated its panel. Marcus, after giving Aryl a worried look, went back to his.
“Aryl?”
Feeling numb, she looked at a closer image of the Oud shore. The device had found a tall narrow building of stone, a tower, with still-dark earth piled haphazardly around its base as though it had thrust through the soil overnight. Light glinted at her from the upper level. Windows like the strangers? “Looks like yours,” she commented.
“No.” The image slid along the coast. There were more of the towers. Many more. “What is?”
Not theirs? “Oud,” she guessed. She could only imagine one reason for new towers with windows overlooking the Lake of Fire. “To watch you.”
“These also watch.” Janex said something to Pilip and the image flickered, then changed to show the lush growth of a more familiar shore.
“Tikitik,” Aryl identified, nodding to herself. Osst grazed in the shallows. Tall figures moved among the shadowy buttresses. “They’re waiting for me. I have to go back.” She indicated herself, then that shore.
“No!” Marcus looked shocked and said several things in his words before catching himself. “Saw, Aryl. Look!” He did something to switch the image. It became a strangely lit vision of the osst struggling in its pool of blood, her clinging to the gourds. Her mouth was wide open; she hadn’t remembered screaming.
Aryl closed her eyes, waving at him to get rid of it.
“Back, no,” he said firmly. “Aryl, stay. Safe.”
&n
bsp; Stay?
She looked at the Om’ray-who-wasn’t, this Marcus Bowman, and took a deep, steadying breath. Kindness or suspicion or something unique to Humans? Any created a problem she hadn’t anticipated. Thought Traveler wouldn’t wait forever. Tikitik plotted and planned— she’d seen that for herself. Traveler would have seen her rescued by the strangers. That was part of its plan, but the longer they delayed her return, the more likely it was the Tikitik would realize she’d managed to communicate with them— that Aryl herself was now part of whatever game they were playing.
It wasn’t, she told herself with significant pity, at all fair.
Before she could think of an argument, Marcus spoke again, this almost a whisper. “Aryl. Look.”
Reap the Wild Wind Page 29
