Riders of the Storm (17 page)

Nowhere. The water fell. And vanished.

It couldn't. That much water had to go somewhere. It should be filling the empty river, racing down the valley to Sona and beyond.

The road, and empty river, ended at a hill of loose rubble and dirt taller than three Om'ray. Aryl ran to it, then up it, her boots digging in with every stride. The roar of the waterfall grew deafening. She met mist, chill and clinging, that turned the footing slick and treacherous. The slope steepened and she grabbed for handholds. Only after the second reach did she recognize what she grabbed.

Aryl froze, one hand on a piece of dark wood, identical to the splinters from the beams of Sona, the other on a skull.

This wasn't a hill. It was another ruin.

The Oud had struck here, too.

Suddenly the urge to turn back, the pull of living Om'ray overwhelmed her. Aryl blinked tears from her eyes and leaned her forehead against the hand on the skull. “Soon,” she promised herself. “But not yet.”

She climbed the rest of the hill with a heavy heart, making no effort to avoid the gray skulls and bones that dotted its surface, though they cracked underfoot. Their appalling number answered one question: why they'd found none in the homes. The exiles had assumed all of the Sona Om'ray had fled into the mountains and died there. After all, that would be the Yena preference, the safety of height. But Sona had come here, in a final, desperate flight along their road.

Why?

What refuge could protect them from a terror underground? Where would Om'ray run?

The Sona Cloisters. There was no other choice.

Sure now of what she'd find, Aryl came to the top and stood, staring through layers and swirls of mist. Her hand rose to her mouth.

She hadn't imagined this.

Water dominated everything. It dropped from the sky, barely touching the immense cliff, its spray like plumes of smoke. Where those plumes touched rock, there was life. Gnarled stalks and sprigs of still-green leaves burst from cracks. Vines thicker than her body somehow found hold on the stone itself. Their tendrils, heavy with clusters of wizened brown fruit, hung out in the spray as if to catch it. The air itself was like a drink.

A drink that vanished. The water plunged into a great black hole, choked with spray and rimmed by more ruins. Nekis sprouted in thick groves along that crumbling edge, their stalks short and twisted, leafless in this cold season but alive. Several were about to fall, their roots washed bare.

Aryl worked her way down, wary of the footing. When she came to the first of the groves, nekis barely over her head, she ran her fingers greedily over the tight buds that tipped every branch. This was what water could do. Bring life even here.

As to the hole? Knife in her belt, her woven coat collecting droplets from the plants, Aryl pushed her way to its edge, forcing a path through the stalks. Without conscious thought, she slipped into old habits, checking as she moved for what might fancy a taste of Yena or merely have thorns. The stunted grove seemed barren of dangerous life; “seemed” couldn't be trusted.

Once at the edge, she found a sturdy, if doomed, stalk leaning over the chasm and walked out along it as far as she could before peering down.

It was like being in a storm where the rain came up as much as fell properly from above. She had to gasp for breath and wipe her face constantly, her bones vibrating with the roar and crash of so much water going…where?

For all she could see, it went through the world to nowhere. There was no flash of white, as if the water struck bottom and boiled. The torrent simply fell into the dark.

Thoughtfully, Aryl walked back up the stalk, leaning with its tilt.

Now she knew where the water from the river had gone—if not why or how.

Returning it to the river was going to be a problem…

Snap! Pop!
The stalk's roots began to give way, and Aryl absently jumped to its neighbor. Maybe there'd be something about moving rivers in a dream, she told herself.

Once more above the grove, she moved along the hill itself, hunting what had to be here. Every living Clan had a Cloisters. Finding Sona's would be irrefutable proof there had been Om'ray here once.

And could be again.

Rock, shards of wood and bone. The destruction here had been horrifyingly complete. But a Cloisters wasn't made of rock or wood; didn't suffer weathering or damage. She'd find it.

Every so often, Aryl checked the sky. There wasn't much to see other than mist and hanging cloud; it was still daylight. For how long? She should retrieve her pack and make a camp. Wood wouldn't be a problem. That would be the prudent, sensible plan.

Something in her couldn't stop. Not yet.

The hill didn't ring the entire hole. It rose highest over the road and the old river, then flattened as it approached the cliff and waterfall on either side. There, the nekis and other, unfamiliar growths took over, cloaking the ruin. To continue, Aryl found herself once more forcing her way through spray-drenched vegetation.

She couldn't stop.

Her coat caught and held on a leafless branch. Impatiently, she tore off the sodden garment, leaving it to hang. It had started to smell anyway. She kept her belt, using it to hold her knife, and shivered as she pressed forward.

“Not yet,” Aryl muttered. She protected her face with her forearms as she pushed through a particularly thick stand of young nekis. A twig snapped against her ear.

She stumbled into the open, at once sinking knee-deep in freshly loose soil and pebbles. Trapped! Her hand flashed to the hilt of her knife. It stayed there.

The Oud reared, black limbs flailing, dust and dirt pouring from the dome and fabric of its covering. “Who are!? Who are!!?”

Aryl coughed and spat dirt from her mouth. The creature rose so high she thought it would topple over backward. “What do!!? What do!?”

The voice came from its…did she call them arms or legs?

“Me? What are you doing?” she demanded, trying her best to portray dignified offense, which wasn't easy, half buried and terrified. Though she could see for herself.

Sona's Cloisters stood beyond the Oud. Not lifted on a stalk like Yena's, but set on the ground, like Grona's or Tuana's. What she could see of it was achingly intact, both levels within their encircling platforms, their petal walls broken by a series of tall wide arches; each of those a triplet of smaller arches: two of a clear window taller than three Om'ray, the centermost a door of metal; the whole roofed by a series of overlapped white rings.

Beautiful.

Once. Now it was, like her, half buried in newly turned dirt. The lights within shone, but to her inner sense it was empty, either abandoned or full of the dead.

There were abundant signs of a prolonged and vigorous attempt to find a way inside. Unsuccessful, since what showed of the Cloisters looked unmarked, though its walls and windows were filthy, muddied with strange tracks. The creature must have been digging for days to move so much rock and dirt. The lowermost platform was filled. She couldn't tell where its paired main doors would be.

It would take Om'ray days to dig it back out again.

The Oud had turned still as stone, though still upright. Then, “Way in? Yesyesyesyes?”

Even if she knew, she'd die first. Aryl thrust out her arm and pointed, her hand shaking with fury. “That belongs to us, not you!”

“Us?” The Oud dropped with a thud, then raced back and forth in front of her, every limb a blur of motion and flailing dirt. It didn't turn around, merely changed direction, as if it didn't matter which end went first. The loose ground didn't slow it at all.

She had no idea what the creature was doing, but while it was doing it, she wormed her legs free.

The Oud plowed to a stop in front of her and reared. “No us!” it declared. “You. Only.”

A threat? Was it telling her she was alone and defenseless?

Or confusion, that until it “looked”—however it managed without eyes—it hadn't been sure how many Om'ray had surprised it?

She needed Enris. Or her mother. Someone who could talk to something not-
real
.

As she'd talked to the strangers.

Remembering that, Aryl stood a bit straighter. The Oud was of Cersi. A neighbor. If they still lived beneath Sona, the last thing she should do was antagonize the first one she met. Say something, she told herself. Anything. “My name is Aryl Sarc.” Her voice sounded weak. She firmed it. “I came to find water for my Clan.”

“Water too much.” It sounded annoyed.

Maybe it was. Drops of spray smeared the dusty dome covering its “head” and were rapidly turning the loose dirt around them both into mud. Aryl's lips twitched. Her own face was clammy with it. She must look like a lump of mud herself. “There is water here,” she clarified, “but the valley is dry.”

“Yesyesyesyes. Way in?”

Stubborn. Determined. Did this Oud know what had happened so long ago? Did it care? Or were they like Om'ray, interested only in what was happening now, to those alive? Vital questions. A shame she didn't dare ask them.

“Why do you want to go in the Cloisters? Not,” she added quickly, “that I'm offering to let you in.”

“Curious.”

One word. A good word. Possibly the only one she would have understood from it.

Aryl tugged her boot free of the dirt and took a cautious step toward the Oud. It lowered its “head,” lifted its midsection, and humped itself rapidly away, stopping a body's length from her. Afraid of her or loath to have an Om'ray so close? She stopped and regarded it for a moment, at a loss.

Finally, desperate. “Do you want us to leave?”

Rearing, the Oud fastened on one word in return. “Us?”

This wasn't going well.

Maybe she should try something else. “Are we safe?”

Its limbs moved rapidly, the lowermost churning through the dirt with such force she had to step back to avoid being showered in it. It sank backward—if that was backward for an Oud—into the ground.

“Wait!” she cried out. “You didn't answer me!”

It paused, its “speaking limbs” barely free to move. “Goodgoodgoodgood. Wait.”

Then, in a final flurry that made her duck to protect her eyes, it was gone.

“‘Wait,'” she echoed.

The creature was ridiculous. Insane. She should ignore it.

What if it had left to confer with others of its kind? What if they discussed the upstart Om'ray who dared reinhabit Sona? What if it returned with some ultimatum that she must be here to answer or her people would suffer?

What if it forgot she was here and went to dig another stupid hole?

“This—” Aryl kicked dirt into the oval depression left by the Oud, “—is why—” another kick, “—I hate—” kick, “—talking to—” kick, “—not-
real,
not-Om'ray, not—” She stopped.

What was that?

Careful to move only her eyes, she sought what had caught her attention. It couldn't have been a sound. The rumble and drone of the falling water masked all but a shout at any distance.

Had she
sensed
something?

Enris warned her not to use Power near Oud. He hadn't been clear if that meant near any Oud or only certain Oud, not to mention reared-and-talking-to-your-face Oud as opposed to might-be-in-the-general-vicinity-don't-care Oud.

A giggle worked its way up her throat, and Aryl pressed her lips together.

Avoiding the worst of the Oud's work to keep her feet from sinking again, she walked as naturally as possible toward the Cloisters. A reasonable goal, being the only shelter outside of the shadowed grove. Mist hung over its round roof, distorting the shape, but the ground grew drier as she approached—farther from the waterfall and spray, though closer to the gigantic wall of rock that ended the valley. The Cloisters had stood before that rock, gleaming and full of life. Sona's Adepts. Its age-weary Chosen, seeking peace. Newborns, to take their names and be recorded. The newly Joined, to give theirs.

There. To the side where the grove bordered the open space.

Aryl did her utmost not to react, but she was certain. Something, or someone, watched. She didn't know how she knew—it wasn't quite a
taste
. The sensation followed her, as if her watcher mirrored her steps.

The ground became more pebble than dirt, those pebbles familiar despite the best efforts of the Oud to overturn them all. Belatedly, she realized she was walking across another of the ditches, but this was much wider and curved. Shallow, she thought, though that was difficult to gauge after the creature had plowed its way back and forth and, from the disturbance, in circles.

If she imagined the space full of water…for an instant, Aryl could
see
what had been here before…

The Cloisters rose like a blossom before a still pool, its lights reflected on itself so that it glistened in welcoming splendor against the dark stone of the cliff. Sweeping groves of nekis and other plants, fragrant and full, rose behind and to the side. Paired paths of stone, white and clean, curled around the water and soared over arched bridges to link the building to the road from Sona. The road was filled with laughing figures, some carrying baskets, others bearing oillights high on poles. More Om'ray than Tuana or even Amna could claim. So many, there was a second settlement behind her, across this made-lake, where the elderly could take their ease close to care, and those waiting to give birth could be watched.

The waterfall had its own lake, wide and churned to perilous froth, spilling and tumbling and babbling where it overflowed down the valley, contained by the river channel, celebrated by Sona. There should be a festival to mark the end of ice and cold, that day when fields and gardens received their first gift of flood and seeds began to grow…

Aryl came back to herself with a jerk of dismay. She'd moved forward; she didn't remember the steps. The M'hir! It was smotheringly close, pulling at her,
demanding
her attention. She refused and shoved it aside, an easier effort this time.