Riders of the Storm (14 page)

“Didn't your parents teach you anything about Choice?”

Enris managed to grow larger, though he hadn't moved. Like a brofer puffing itself up in self-defense. “I had,” he said stiffly, “more important things to learn.”

“Apparently not.”

“And I suppose you're going to teach me?”

No. Not. Never. Aryl didn't bother to say any of that aloud. Instead, she circled back to where they started. “You weren't damaged.”

Enris flicked an escaping ember back to the fire. “The Adepts—”

“Lied.”

“Not every Adept is like your mother!” He gestured a quick apology. “Aryl, I—”

“You're a fool,” she retorted. “Like I was. Adepts protect the Agreement by preventing change. Change like me—and like you, Enris Mendolar. I've never heard of an unChosen able to refuse a Chooser's Call. I can't imagine it. But you did it. You still do. You ignored Seru. You dismissed Grona's Choosers. Let alone how you entered the M'hir.” He took a sharp breath as if to argue. She didn't let him. “Don't you see? You proved yourself a threat to be removed for the good of your Clan.

“You're right, Enris,” she finished. “Not every Adept is like my mother. Tuana's gave you a chance to live.”

He jumped up and strode away without a word, the crunch of his boots ending a few steps into the dark. She let him be and watched the flames, careful to keep her thoughts to herself. Not easy, remembering the moment she and the others had been exiled. None had believed they'd survive the first truenight; without the Human's help, none would have. Yet was it Taisal's fault that Yena had had no supplies to share, no safe road of dirt and stone for their feet?

She couldn't forgive the decision, but suddenly she wondered. Was it one only a Yena could have made? Despite its beauty and lush life, the canopy was a harsh existence. She doubted other Om'ray faced death every day or fell asleep to screams. It made Yena strong. Had it made them ruthless, too?

If she believed it necessary for the good of her people, would she do what her mother—what Yena's Adepts—had done?

No, Aryl assured herself. In Sona, they would find another way. She would protect her kind, never waste their lives.

The fire snapped and crackled to itself. Then, from the dark, a contented “Hmm,” as if Enris had discovered a forgotten sweet in his pocket.

Crunchcrunchcrunch.
When the firelight caught his face as he sat, he looked younger. His face might have shed lines of grief or anger or both. Noticing her attention, the Tuana flashed his grin. “So you're saying I'm special.”

Her lips quirked. “What you are is annoying.”

“More than special.” The grin widened. “Unique. Perfect!”

“Insufferable,” Aryl countered.

“With, according to you, my wise little Yena, my pick of Cersi's Choosers!”

“How could any be worthy?” That made him laugh. Her chuckle died in her throat.

What would it be like, to offer her hand and have an unChosen refuse it? She felt a rush of sympathy for Seru—and for the unknown Tuana who'd wanted Enris so desperately.

What would it be like to have an unChosen—no, not any unChosen, but Enris Mendolar—have him take her hand, knowing it meant he wanted her more than any other?

Suddenly too warm, Aryl coughed and sputtered in an anguish of embarrassment. “S–smoke,” she managed in answer to his quizzical look, glad her shields must have kept the wildly errant thought private.

Enris laughed, then bumped her shoulder companionably once more. “Choosers will have to wait. I'm in no hurry to complicate my life. What matters is the M'hir. You're the Adept there. Do you believe I can ever use it?” Lightly, as if all he asked was for another rokly stick.

“It's not safe,” she evaded hoarsely.

“What is?” A pause. “Your turn. The truth, Aryl Sarc. Can I try the M'hir again? When I'm ready,” he said in hasty addition. “My head still spins.”

She could say no. Should say it. Protect him from himself.

Her teeth caught her lower lip. For how long? Until curiosity overwhelmed caution? Oh, that would be the first moment the Tuana was bored. Until he was truly desperate, with no other choice but to try again? Courage, Enris had in abundance.

Doubt made any handhold fail.

Aryl bumped her shoulder into his. “You've
touched
the M'hir. Sent a roof into it,” she reminded him. “You're as much an Adept there as I am. Learn from what went wrong, like anything else. Be careful.”

As she would be.

 

The giant fire was a heap of pale, ember-studded ash, firstlight little more than a promise toward Amna, when Aryl gathered her feet under her body and rose without a sound. Enris half lay against his pack. His head was bent at a painful-seeming angle, his mouth open, his arms spread wide. She had to step over his long legs to get by. The Tuana consumed the space of two normal Om'ray, even asleep.

They'd spent the rest of truenight talking about silly things, laughing at each other's stories. Climb and seek in the light-kissed canopy. Pushing a cartful of giggling cousins in a race. Sweetpies and dresel cake.

Brothers lost.

Homes left.

Why not to polish your father's hammer. Where not to store a fresh, wet hide.

Rain that filled the world. Dust that did the same.

Somewhere during a lengthy discussion of Tuana boots—more precisely the clear superiority of Yena footwear—Aryl had received a snore instead of answer.

She'd stayed awake, to watch over him as long as she could bear.

To watch him wake up, see him realize he had to go, try to say good-bye?

She'd keep her memory of this truenight instead.

“Find joy, Enris Mendolar,” Aryl whispered, this time meaning it, and walked away.

She didn't look back.

“F
IND JOY, ENRIS MENDOLAR.”

Enris kept his eyes closed. If Aryl wanted to leave like this, he'd make it easier for her.

Easier for whom?

He couldn't hear footsteps. No surprise; she walked like air.

Was she gone?

His head rolled to face the glow of Sona's Om'ray. Her inner warmth would be part of it, indistinguishable unless he
reached
to find her. If he did, if he touched her thoughts once more, if he felt her brilliance, her passion and strength again…he'd stay.

“Find joy, Enris Mendolar.” Had it been her voice or a sigh of wind across the barren stone?

He should stay. Vyna and the Om'ray artifact were impossible hopes, even if Aryl believed. Sona needed him; he needed them. No Om'ray should live alone.

Aryl Sarc's time of Choice would come.

He could stay. Be there when she was ready. She believed him whole, even if he had doubts. To Join with her?

His breath caught.

No Om'ray could live alone.

He closed the fingers of his right hand around sharp, frozen stones. That was the reality. A future with no Sona. No Aryl. No Om'ray at all. Unless impossible hopes could be true.

And he could find them.

 

Pushing a loaded cart up the ramp, walking away from home, leaving Sona. One step at a time. If Enris made them long steps—careless, driven, hurried steps that splashed through rivulets and skidded over stone—there was no one to comment on his flatlander clumsiness.

When he fell, only his gloves saving the skin of his hands, only his outthrust hands saving his nose, he broke out in helpless, bitter laughter.

“Fool,” he gasped, climbing to his feet. “Break a leg here and you'll be supper.”

Though there didn't seem to be anything interested. Or anything alive at all. His shadow, the only thing taller than a boot, stretched over a numbing sameness of gray pebbles, drifted dirt, and isolated tufts of dead vegetation. The wind, a constant now, tugged at his hair and lifted the ends of his coat. The sun hung in a faded arch of sky, flattening the distance from one side of the valley to the other. He thought he should be halfway by now, but the far wall seemed no closer.

Maybe he'd wind up as a mystery among the pebbles. Tatters of cloth, a pack, a few longer-than-most bones. A token that lied.

“I should keep walking,” he told himself, not yet ready to be bones.

Enris had no particular reason for striking out across the valley, other than it was the most direct route to Vyna. And flat. He was fond of flat, and this place rivaled the plains of the Oud for level terrain. The Oud. They hadn't reshaped here. Why?

“Oof.” He stumbled and caught himself. Flat except for the little ditches. They were everywhere. Traps, more like it. Being filled with smaller pebbles, they blended with the ground and were just deep enough to catch his foot every single time.

Another of Aryl Sarc's ideas: that the Sona Om'ray had used the ditches to spread the water of the river to where they wanted it.

He'd walked through it: a river remembered in sand and rock. Where the tiny mountain streams trickled down its crumbling banks, their flow ended in mats of bent reeds, dead and brown now, but perhaps they would grow again in warm weather. Unless the warmer weather dried the mountain streams. Tough place to be a plant.

Tougher place to be an Om'ray, let alone be Yena, used to such frantic abundance of growing things.

The problem with Aryl was that an idea wasn't enough. She saw a sky and wanted wings. She saw an empty river and parched land, and wanted water and growth. She saw a homeless group of exiles, most too old or too young, and wanted a Clan.

Given any chance at all, she'd do it, too.

Enris tugged his water sac from its loop—an idea of his own. If she could do the impossible, he could. No slip of a Yena was going to best a Tuana!

For no particular reason, he found himself humming through his teeth as he walked.

 

The mountain loomed taller but no closer by late afternoon, as if it toyed with him. Enris had expected to reach its feet by firstnight, to drink fresh cold water from one of its streams and camp where outcroppings of rock would shelter a fire. At this rate, he'd be lucky to reach it by tomorrow's sunset.

Sona had faded with every step. Rayna's glow was now the brightest and warmest. He ignored the urgent pull of both as best he could. Vyna lay ahead. On the other side of the mountain.

The mountain that wasn't getting any closer.

“Patience,” he told himself.

Expectation meant nothing. Perseverance was what mattered. Pay attention to the details. Do your best at each moment. Nothing worth the making could be rushed.

His father, Jorg, was fond of such sayings. He'd look up from his bench when Enris muttered with frustration—a frequent occurrence during the year when rapid growth undid all he'd learned and made him doubt his awkward fingers would ever do what he wanted again—and send
calm encouragement
with the words. A young, proud Enris had been less than grateful. He blushed to remember how quickly he'd slam tight his shields and stomp from the shop, how he'd roam the fields like a storm cloud until an empty stomach brought him home. Ridersel would feed him. Jorg would pretend not to notice he'd ever been gone. Kiric, his older brother, would laugh and ruffle his hair, a loud, warm laugh that somehow took away the day's sting.

From what Aryl had told him of her brother, Costa, maybe the two had been friends for the time Kiric lived with Yena. The peace of that thought startled him. His brother's loss had been an open wound for three Harvests; he'd shared Kiric's despair as well as his death agony.

What had changed? He'd seen Yena for himself. He'd felt a Chooser's Call. Perhaps, Enris thought with a wry twist of his mouth, he'd needed to grow up himself to forgive Kiric's leaving him.

Those on Passage had their reasons. His happened to be a little different. He snugged up his Grona scarf. He'd be happy to find shelter from the wind tonight. Even happier to find a way around the appalling mountain that wouldn't mean forcing his way through the landscape torn by the Oud. After that?

One detail at a time, he told himself.

At last the footing improved. Fewer ditches. In fact, now that he noticed, there were no lines of pale pebbles ahead. The ground beneath his boots was still stony, but these were larger, flat stones, embedded in hard, cracked soil. As good as a road. Enris shrugged his pack from one shoulder and pulled out the blade he'd found. Time for a good look by daylight, now that his feet could look after themselves.

Aryl agreed the symbols were words. Not a name—or not just a name. Enris puzzled at it as he walked. A list, like Tuana's Speaker prepared for the Oud's Visitations? He couldn't imagine one kept on a tool. Something important to be remembered? That didn't make sense either. What Om'ray needed to know was shared mind-to-mind: parent to child, between Chosen, to some extent among those doing the same work. No one Om'ray could know everything. He didn't know how to operate an Oud harvester in a field; Traud didn't know how to pour metal into a mold, let alone properly sharpen the machine's blades.

Everyone knew what was dangerous, and who belonged.

Daily happenings and advice were part of ordinary conversation. Strangers newly Chosen might share recent events from their Clan, if approved by the Adepts, and Council made announcements of import in front of all.

Or so he'd believed. What did his Clan know of his Passage? He'd entered the Cloisters unconscious; once recovered, he'd been told to leave in the dark, alone. Mauro Lorimar and his followers had known enough to lay ambush, to send him on his way bloody. How? Yuhas sud S'udlaat, once Parth and Yena, had been the only well-wisher, saving him from a worse beating. Had Yuhas told his family the decision of Council?

Had his grandmother, Councillor Dama Mendolar, known the truth about the Adepts' reasons, as Aryl claimed?

Ridersel's relationship with her mother was strained at best. That would end it.

The past…Enris rubbed the dull edge thoughtfully. The Eldest told their stories—most, including his grandmother's, laced with warnings about proper behavior for unChosen—about Om'ray they had known. To hear them was to believe nothing ever changed, including the foolish risk-taking of young Om'ray. Only Adepts collected everything there was to know, to be recorded so only they could read it.

Why?

A new question. A radical one. The sort Aryl would ask.

Enris pondered it as he tucked the blade inside his coat and took a carefully small sip from the sac, leaving the water in his mouth as long as possible. Adepts were the gifted, most powerful Om'ray. They received training to enhance their inner abilities, abilities to be used for the benefit of their Clan. He could have joined their ranks, had he not preferred the work of his hands over his mind. And preferred being able to wander the fields instead of work at all, should the mood strike him.

If he'd become an Adept, would they have let him stay?

Enris shrugged. More to the point, as an Adept, would he have known about Sona? The death of an entire Clan should have been felt by all Om'ray alive at that time. Wouldn't such an event be recorded?

Unless each new generation of Adepts merely recorded their own time, without reading what had passed before.

He would, if he had the chance. Enris added reading to his own list, the one of questions he hoped Vyna would answer, and problems they would solve.

Once he got there.

 

Enris didn't begrudge the lack of sleep last truenight. He'd never forget a moment: how firelight burnished Aryl's hair, the quickness of her thoughts, her warm slow smiles. He might not want to remember the trauma of his encounter within the M'hir, but that memory was also of her courage and Power. Her insights. It was the leave-taking he would have wanted from his family.

But—a yawn cracked his jaw—he was paying for it.

The sun had melted into its mold beyond Grona, to cool overnight so it would be ready to rise over Pana tomorrow. Worin had earnestly presented this explanation at the supper table, after his first time operating the vat controls. Enris grinned, wincing as his chapped lower lip split again.

All he could see was the dirt within the splash of brightness ahead of his boot. And his boot. And sometimes the cold puffs of his breath. He'd shortened the twist of rope inside the Sona light, hoping to conserve its oil. Walking—if the ground was cooperatively flat—was one thing he could do half asleep. If he was half awake and not dreaming he was walking while really he was asleep…

“'Nuff of that,” the Tuana said aloud, raising the light. He'd tried securing it to his belt, but if tipped to one side, it went out. Running low on oil, he suspected.

Something caught his eye. He took an eager step forward, swinging the light from side to side trying to find it again.

There, right in front. He would have walked into it in another step or two. “Finally!”

Not much as rocks went: roundish, gray, and plain. Barely up to his waist, with a flat top. But it was the first object larger than his fist he'd seen since leaving Sona and the first hint he was close to the other side of the valley. Enris dropped his pack on the rock with a relieved groan.

There would be more nearby, big and small ones, with streams trickling between them. Lovely wet streams.

Light in hand, he walked outward in a series of arcs, glancing back every few steps to be sure he stayed in sight of his rock. Nothing but flat dirt. He widened his search in disbelief. Nothing.

Surr-PLUNK! Clatterclatter.

Enris halted. When there was no other sound, he turned, slowly, and brought his light high over his head.

His pack was lying on the ground. The
clatter
had been his sticks.

Odd.

He might be bone-tired, but he knew he'd put the pack securely on the rock's flat top. Grumbling, he walked over to his pack and picked up the sticks. He put his light on the rock.

Where it tilted and guttered.

And went out.

Because the rock was no longer flat.

Abandoning the light and sticks, Enris scooped up his pack and broke into a run, trusting his memory of the ground he'd walked, using his
sense
of place to guide him in the pitch-darkness.

After a few hasty strides, he slowed, then stopped. What was he doing? So his pack slid off a rock. So he'd put his light down on some unseen bump. It was a rock, not a table. Not a hunter. He wasn't a frantic Yena. Truenight was safe.

Still.

Holding his breath, feeling the fool, Enris listened for anything louder than the pulse of blood in his ears.

Surrrrr-tinkle CRUNCH!

Like that: the sound of the small metal light being crushed by something heavy. Something alive.

This time, when he started running, Enris didn't plan to stop any time soon.

A shame there was a ditch directly ahead.

His foot caught and he flew forward with the momentum of his last stride, unable to drop the pack fast enough to bring his hands up to break the fall.

He'd never live this down, Enris thought with remarkable calm before the ground and truenight claimed him.