Ashes and Rain: Sequel to Khe (The Ahsenthe Cycle Book 2) (9 page)

“There are no secrets here, Khe,” a loud voice said. “Everything is known.”

We swung our heads to look where the words had come from. Min and Gintok stood shoulder to shoulder in the dim light.

“Come inside now,” Mintok said.

The muddy-brown of fear covered Jit’s, Stoss’s, and Thedra’s necks.

I stepped toward Simanca’s unitmates. “These doumanas were just about to bring me to you.”

Gintok laughed under her breath. “Your neck should be aglow from the shame of that lie, Khe. Where has your decency gone?” She glanced over her shoulder back toward her shared dwelling. “You will all come now.”

Tav was sitting in one of the over-stuffed chairs, her hands in her lap, her eyes on her hands. Simanca was in another chair, her back straight with eager expectation but her face composed in worry. My three commune-sisters stood huddled together, a few steps away from me, their chins sunk toward their chests. I didn’t know how Simanca and her unitmates knew we were there in the dark, but it was plain they had known, and that Simanca had sent Gintok and Min to fetch us.

“Thedra,” Simanca said, “is everything all right at your dwelling? No damage from the — ”

She waved her hand in the air as if it might accidently bump into the word she couldn’t find. We had no word for what had happened, the shiver and buckle of the planet. Why have a name for something that never occurs? Had never occurred.

Thedra looked up to answer. “No damage. A bowl fell from a ledge and broke. Nothing else.”

Simanca nodded. “Good.” She turned her gaze to me, but her words were for my unitmates. “Khe was leaving us again, after promising to stay. I’m very disappointed.” She shifted her eyes to Jit, Stoss, and Thedra. “You must be very disappointed as well. Here, your own sister and unitmate seems to return to you, takes our hospitality,
pretends
to love us and want nothing more than to return to her rightful place, but all the while she is conspiring with corentans to take our food, seeds, beasts and fowls — and then abandon us in our time of need.”

She paused, waiting for my sisters to speak, but none did.

“There are things you don’t know.” Simanca swung her gaze back to me. “Lunge has been prosperous. But suddenly we have rain. You know that if the rain keeps up, we won’t be able to plant at our usual time. What I’m going to tell you now, only my unitmates have known before this. We traded for this information when Trantal corenta was here.” She paused, building up her big moment of revelation. “The Powers, who helped us through all the aspects of our lives, have been destroyed.”

My unitmates gasped.

“This doesn’t seem to surprise you, Khe,” Simanca said.

I kept my eyes on the commune leader, my gaze as level and searing as hers. “I was in Chimbalay, being treated for my affliction when it happened. There was an explosion. No one knows what caused it.”

My neck didn’t warm at the lie. What sort of doumana was I becoming that I could bend the truth so easily and without shame?

I felt the eyes of each sister in the room focused on me, but I didn’t waver from watching Simanca’s face. This was a competition Simanca wouldn’t win.

Her gaze finally dropped away. “There is opportunity here for Lunge. With Khe to help grow our crops, Lunge will be positioned as a powerful commune, one that can become First among all others.”

The leading commune in any region received the largest seeds, the best fertilizer, the newest machinery, the prize hatchlings. The land of Simanca’s dreams came without boundaries.

I turned my arm so that my wrist faced up. “I won’t have the time to help you.”

“But you will have some,” she said. “Commemoration Day is still weeks away. If you go to the beast-keep and bird pens and the seed stockpiles now, you can put the extra growth in them that we will need after you are gone.”

A large silence grew in the room. Tav left her chair and stood by the window, leaning against the sill. The window behind her was dark. With her light-red skin and white hipwrap, she stood out in sharp contrast. Her voice, when she spoke, was small and quiet.

“Returning doumanas are never asked to work extra in their last days. Our way is to honor the Returners, and expect nothing from them but the joy of their company.”

I wanted to stroke Tav’s throat. No one contradicted Simanca. Ever.

The glare Simanca sent toward Tav could have cut through walls.

Thedra took a half step forward and sang a few lines from
The
Glory
of
Returning
.

“
Praise
and
honor
to
she
who
has
given

Her
best
and
her
all
to
the
task
and
her
sisters
.”

My neck burned with gratitude.

The spots on Simanca’s throat flamed with the brown-black of anger. She set her hands on the arms of her chair and started to rise. Jit and Stoss stepped back, but Tav and Thedra stood their place.

A deep rumble rolled through the air. I braced my feet, afraid of what might be coming. The world shook again, more violently this time, throwing Simanca back into her chair and all of us who were standing to the ground. My shoulder banged hard against the wooden floor. Pain radiated down my arm. I heard a terrible sound — like rocks rolling into water. And then a sound I knew too well from Chimbalay — the crack of breaking clearstone in the windows. Shards clattered on the floor.

Thedra, Gin, and Mintok jumped up and ran toward the door that hung loose on its hinges, their arms clutched tight to their chests, their bodies bent forward. Simanca bolted from her chair and followed. Jit lay face down on the ground, her arms over her head, as if that could protect her from the chunks of wall crumbling down. I grabbed her hand and pulled her up, saying, “We have to get out of here now. Come on.”

Tav lay on the floor as well — her eyes blinking fast, as though a sudden bright light shone on them. I let go of Jit’s hand, turned her around, and shoved her toward the door.

A shard of clearstone jutted from Tav’s neck. Blood pooled around the shard and ran down over her shoulder to the floor. I sank down on my heels next to her and lay my hand in her open palm.

She took hold of two of my fingers and faintly squeezed. “Go now.”

“Not until you come with me,” I said. “I’ll help you up.”

I could see her fading, her life leaking away.

Wall
!
Home
! I sent.
Can
you
hear
me
?
We
need
help
at
Lunge
!

“Simanca,” Tav whispered. “She will use you up. No one can stop her.”

“Shoosh now,” I said. “Everything will be all right.”

Wall
! I sent again, desperate for help. There was still no answer.

I eased my hand out of her weak hold and touched the few emotion spots not covered by blood. They were already growing cold.

“You were always my favorite,” Tav said. She closed her eyes and breathed no more.

The ground began to roil again, harder this time. The wall beneath the broken windows crumbled like mud on a stream bank. I pulled myself to my feet and stumbled outside.

My commune-sisters had all abandoned their dwellings and stood outside — some stunned and as still as boulders, some running one way, then stopping and running another. Lights shining from doors left open in haste illuminated the open ground. Two walls of the granary had collapsed in almost whole pieces. Some of the sisters ran toward the building, some away.

Simanca yelled, “Everyone out to backfield five. Go now.”

Backfield five was in the opposite direction to the boundary land where Kelroosh was waiting.

I ran.

The lights of Lunge grew dim behind me. The voices of my sisters were silenced by distance. I peered through the shallow light to see the outline of Kelroosh on the plain. My pulse jumped in my throat.

The plain was bare. Kelroosh was gone.

I shook my head, blinked to clear my vision, and looked again. I was near enough that I should be able to make out the walls, maybe even the gate. I sped my steps, but knew it was no use.

Something must have happened, some emergency. Azlii and Nez wouldn’t abandon me here. What could have made Kelroosh flee? A prayersong jangled in my head.

See
my
sisters
and
keep
them
from
harm

Safely
held
in
your
loving
arms
.

Kelroosh was gone.

I needed a new plan. I’d already walked once between Lunge and Chimbalay — the only place I could think to go for sanctuary. I didn’t relish doing it again. At least this time I knew what lay before me. This time, I would be wiser.

Fatigue gripped me. My legs felt as stiff as wood. Last time I’d had provisions, tools, a firestarter. This time I had only the torn and dirtied cloak on my back. It was impossible. I’d never make it to Chimbalay.

The wind was picking up. I heard it in the distance, whooshing over the hills that lay between the plains and the wilderness. I pulled the cloak tight.

The roar of the wind rose. I cocked my head and listened hard. Not wind. I knew this sound. I’d heard it the day the beasts chased me through the wilderness and likely would have ended me if not for that sound and what it meant. I peered through the darkness, hoping I wasn’t simply imagining what I wanted to hear. Slowly the thing took shape — dark and rectangular, its stone edges softly rounded — descending slowly from the star-filled sky.

Kelroosh.

“Wall felt it coming,” Azlii said.

We sat in Home’s receiving room — Azlii, Nez and I, Nez sitting close to me, our knees touching.

“Truth,” Azlii said, “the plants felt it first, the way they feel long before we do the magnetic changes in the planet that means Resonance is coming. They sent thought-pictures, but you know how plants are — sometimes it’s hard to figure out what they mean. But Wall knew. Not what was wrong, but that something was.

It
was
horrible
, Home sent.
The
land
was
shivering
.

“Wall sent for all of us to run to our dwellings, saying we had to leave,” Azlii said. “It had never done that before. Some of us did what was asked, but some stood around, questioning. Wall started to panic, screaming at us in a way I hadn’t known it could.

“Everyone jumped to her dwellings then,” she said. “Moments later, we rose. No one knew where to go. We circled over Lunge and Hetta communes, and the hills, and over the northern edge of the wilderness. Wild birds and flying beasts were in the air with us. Every single one in the area, I think. We had to swerve to miss flocks that seemed to have no more idea where they were going or why then we did.”

Nez touched my neck. “But we never forgot you, Khe. We wouldn’t have left you.”

I wanted to smile, but couldn’t manage it. Fear and sorrow wrapped me as securely as the Bethon Blue cloak Simanca had roped around me.

Azlii said, “When the birds started to settle down, we headed back toward Lunge, to get you. We were coming for you, but you were already here.”

I told them then about what had happened at Lunge, about Simanca’s dwelling collapsing. About Simanca — and Tav.

Nez stroked my throat. No one spoke for a long, long moment.

“What are we going to do now?” I asked finally.

Rain was splashing against the windows. Azlii rose and stared out at the steady fall of drops, as small and hard as gravel, pinging against the window. She tapped her fingers nervously against the side of her leg.

A dark thought ran through my mind over and over, like a stuck loop on a visionstage:

The
world
is
falling
apart
.

Binley sucked on her bottom lip — thinking, I supposed, before speaking.

“I inventoried this morning. We’ll be out of food in three days. We would have been out by now, but we were lucky with the kiiku and denish this year.”

Nez shot me a sharp look that I pretended not to see. I’d used my abilities to push the little patch of kiiku and denish in Kelroosh even though Pradat insisted I should conserve all my strength. I was glad I’d done it. If I’d known then what would be happening now, I would have pushed harder.

“We could try at Grunewald,” I said. “The doumanas there might have extra.”

Azlii nodded. “They’ve always had plenty to barter.”

Grunewald was the commune Simanca had been desperate to beat in the tenth-year competition, the reason she’d pressed me so hard. The reason I’d not live long enough to see the next Commemoration Day.

I shifted on the cushion where I sat and focused on the sound of Home repeating our conversation to the other structures and doumanas. Soon all of Kelroosh would know exactly where things stood. It was better to listen to Home than follow my thoughts down the dark paths they wanted to go. I’d return to the creator soon enough.

It was there though, every moment — the thought of my Returning — like a bruise I kept poking to see if it still hurt, somehow surprised each time that it did.

Azlii stood and dusted her hands against her thighs. “Grunewald it is. We’ll leave in the morning.”

Kelroosh slid over the plain, slowing and stopping in the open space just beyond the furthest fields of Grunewald, in the wild spot allotted for corentas. Rain pelted the roofs, windows, streets, and commons. The ground, when we stepped outside, was wet, the soil thick and muddy, raindrops splashing as they hit the saturated soil.

Azlii, Nez, and I pulled up the hoods of our cloaks and drew them tight around our faces. When Binley joined us near the gate, her hood was drawn up the same as ours, and she walked hunched forward.

Wall huffed and heaved to get its gate open, the wood swollen from the rain.

Be
careful
out
there
, Wall sent as we passed through the gate.
That
ground
looks
as
slippery
as
a
commune
doumana’s
promise
.

The fields were empty as we crossed them. No work could be done in this weather, no plowing or other preparations. The few Barren Season crops that hadn’t been harvested lay limp on the ground, rotting from the rain. The sight pained my heart. No grower liked to see crops go to waste.

Grunewald was a large commune, the largest in the region, bigger than Lunge. We crossed field after field, our foot casings squelching in the mud — cold leaking through the soles — before the dwellings and main structures came into view.

“I wonder why they don’t turn the lights on,” Nez said. “It’s dark out here. It must be darker inside.”

I turned my head so my earhole faced the structures, but I couldn’t hear anything.

When we got closer, Azlii called out, “We’ve come from Kelroosh to speak with you. Will anyone offer us hospitality?”

I expected lights to turn on, doors to open, but nothing happened.

We made our way to the first structure and banged on the door.

No one answered.

We crossed to the structure next to it, and called out. No response. Azlii leaned against the door. It creaked open slowly, as sticky as our gate had been. We stood a moment, listening, waiting, but no one came to greet us.

“Come on,” Azlii cocked her head toward the empty-seeming room.

No commune doumana would ever enter a dwelling without notice. I guessed that kler doumanas had the same rule because Nez hesitated as I did.

Azlii glanced up and shook her head. “Pftt. What’s wrong with you two?” She pushed the door open a bit further and she and Binley wriggled inside. Nez and I glanced at each other. I shrugged, and we followed them in.

The dwelling was empty.

“They could be in community hall,” I said. If commune doumanas weren’t in the fields, or in their dwellings, the hall was the place they were most likely to be.

We went back outside, into the rain. The wind had shifted. The drops pelted us from a sharp angle. I shielded my face with my hand over my eyes and looked around until I spotted the large structure that had to be their community hall.

“This way,” I said.

Grunewald’s hall was large, big enough to hold two of Kelroosh’s Hall, with doors as wide as Home was long, built of high-grade Redstone, polished smooth.

Azlii banged the side of her fist on the stone. “We’ve come from Kelroosh. Will you offer us hospitality?”

No voice answered. The door stayed shut.

“Do you think they’re hiding inside?” Nez asked. “Maybe the shivering world frightened them. They could be making offerings.”

Corentans are without faith, and Azlii’s patience was running thin. “Let’s move this piece of stone and find out.”

Probably there was a secret to the door, a balance point that would make it swing as if weightless, but we didn’t know the trick. It took all four of us, grunting and sweating — Azlii swearing under her breath — to push it open. Our footsteps echoed as we walked inside. If the doumanas of Grunewald were hiding somewhere, it wasn’t here. I saw the thought-grains Azlii sent toward the structure, heard her ask where the doumanas of this commune were, but there was no answer. I didn’t know if the structure couldn’t hear her or didn’t know
how
to answer.

Like the root cache, I thought. My shoulders pulled toward my earholes almost of their own accord as I remembered being trapped and trying hard to talk to the cache, thinking maybe it understood but not being sure.

“We’ll check the other structures,” Azlii said.

Binley glanced around. “Grunewald is a large commune. There must be over a hundred and fifty doumanas living here.”

“So where are they?” Nez asked.

We pried our way into every structure, including the beast-keeps and grain bins. The musty scent of stored seed and straw-strewn floor flowed out to greet us. The only signs of life were six preslets pecking at the fallen seeds around the bases of the silos. My neck was hot with worry. The rain had stopped and we’d all pulled back the hoods of our cloaks. The blue-red of anxiety showed bright on the throats of my three companions.