Riders of the Storm (7 page)

When the next flash came, and they moved forward as a group, Aryl staggered and had to catch herself. Had she helped at all? She hoped her sudden clumsiness was a sign.

The drop from this ledge to the last was barely twice an adult's height, but jumping was impossible, too. One at a time, the Om'ray slipped over the edge and felt for holds that weren't covered in ice. Aryl came last, waiting to be sure all below had found safe footing before joining the chain again.

The final stage was a nightmarish tumble of ice-slicked boulders. The only grace was that a slip here, and there were many, couldn't send you farther than the next obstacle. No one would escape bruises, Aryl knew, feeling her own.

Easier ahead.
An almost giddy relief spread with the message. Veca had reached the bank of the narrow mountain stream. Soon, they were all free of the boulders. Level ground, but its scattered pebbles were still slippery as Aryl discovered, landing on her backside with her first incautious stride.

Small steps here, too, she thought ruefully.

Despite the need for care, those ahead of her moved more quickly, and Aryl agreed with their haste, just as eager to be free of the rock and ice. The storm, having failed to stop the Yena, admitted defeat, its thunder fading to a discontented mutter. The horizon grew brighter, then light began to stream through breaks in the clouds. The ice-rain glittered as it fell; the ice-encased stone glistened with deadly beauty, like some scaled predator basking in the sun.

Still day? The heavy cloud had fooled her. Aryl measured the sun's position against her sense of Grona's—it wouldn't be day for long.

Where was the sun through truenight? Before it woke the Pana and Amna Om'ray?

She shook her head, shaking ice and droplets from her hood. It didn't matter where it went—the Tikitik had toyed with her, mocked her understanding of the world and its light. What mattered, Aryl thought grimly, was reaching shelter before the sun abandoned them.

As for that shelter…she
reached
for Haxel and found her, confirming by that identification what her inner sense knew, that the others were now stationary. They'd found something—or been stopped by a barrier like that impossible river in the next gorge. She preferred the something, imagining a roof and snug walls while she was at it. And heat. Decent, comfortable heat. Glows would be nice.

She couldn't
send
to ask. It was beyond her range and theirs. Another reason to discover which of the exiles could be taught to access the
other place
. Distance didn't seem to affect it the same way—

Splash! Aryl looked down, surprised to find her foot in a shallow puddle. Was the ice-rain becoming something normal at last? She couldn't tell. Her fingers and toes were numb, as was the tip of her nose, but her body was damp with sweat as much as from seepage through her now-useless Grona coat.

What fell from the sky looked and sounded the same. It was the little river that had changed. The width of a stride a moment ago, it had swollen to three times that, in many places spilling over its rocky banks. Tendrils seeped along cracks and filled depressions.

Soon they were all splashing through puddles, a harmless nuisance to already wet feet, except when the puddle formed over ice. At least the ice was melting, adding its drips to the rain and rotting softly underfoot. Sheets of it slid from the rock walls in random smashes they quickly learned to ignore.

Harmless for how long? Aryl wondered, glancing back up the gorge. Its origin within the mountain ridge was masked by rain and mist. Fed by cloudbursts, the waters of the Lay Swamp could rise with terrible speed. And the Lay had all the groves to hold its flood, unlike this narrow, steep-walled gorge.

She wasn't the only one concerned. Veca had already set a quicker, more dangerous pace. Aryl moved even faster, making her way up the line heedless of risk. The older Om'ray gave her a harried look once they were side by side. “What is it?”

“Haxel and the others must be waiting for us to join them. What if they're on the other side of the river we couldn't cross?” Aryl gestured to the puddles spreading across the gorge floor. “What if it's flooding, too? We'll be cut off.”

Veca shrugged. “There'll be a bridge.”

Aryl raised her eyebrows. “A bridge?”

“Grona build them.” As if this settled it.

“What makes you think this is part of Grona?”

Another shrug. “Could be Rayna, for all I know. Can you tell?”

Aryl paused while they used a pair of boulders to cross a more ambitious tendril of escaping river. She hadn't noticed any transition from Yena to Grona, not inwardly. She'd simply
known
they were in another Clan's domain. How?

Proximity to the village? It couldn't be that…not only that, she corrected herself. What defined a Clan's influence? The location of Om'ray minds, their glow—that was what she sensed. But with no Om'ray nearby but the exiles—and Enris—what made this bit of Cersi feel like Grona and not Yena?

Besides the fact that no Yena would want this lifeless heave of stone?

Though now that she considered the question—Aryl waited to let Veca consider the best route around a wider-than-most puddle—she realized this place didn't feel like Grona or Rayna or any other Clan. Not to her.

Were they nearing the edge of the world?

She felt no compulsion to stop, no dread of traveling too far from her kind despite being farther than she'd ever imagined. Yet from all accounts, the edge of the world revealed itself in that way—it was the limit of Om'ray existence, and Om'ray existence, after all, defined the world.

What of the world—the worlds—of the strangers? What of the world where Marcus Bowman had stood as a young Human, perhaps wondering such things, too?

Not, she reminded herself, that Humans were
real
in the way Om'ray were.

“We should wait for him.”

Preoccupied, Aryl almost had to puzzle which “him” Veca meant. “Enris?” She
reached
. He wasn't far from them now. “He'll be glad. We took most of the food.”

“He can help carry Chaun.”

Her fellow exiles had a distressing tendency to value the Tuana's strength over any other of his virtues. Aryl hid a sympathetic wince.

 

The gorge opened without warning, its rocky walls plunged into the soil of the valley like longknives, its now-exuberant little river absorbed by a deeper, wider channel half choked with the stalks of some tall thin vegetation. Those stalks bent with the current, taming it, silencing it. On the shore, to either side, similar stalks lay broken and flattened to the ground by, Aryl assumed, falling lumps of ice. Why had she thought the valley would be spared?

The storm itself rumbled in the distance. Not done, but not immediate. The rocks and pebbles of the mountain ridge, like the river, disappeared beneath dirt, showing as scattered mounds in what was otherwise flat terrain. Flat terrain covered, away from the water, by a messy carpet of dead leaves and smaller stalks, none over knee height. The Grona spoke of winter as a time when their plants slept beneath the ground; spring as a time of regrowth.

She hoped they were right. It all looked dead to her.

Ziba left Seru to skip through the sodden leaves. The improvement in footing cheered them all. For once, Aryl admitted, she could appreciate what Enris saw in walking on flat, boring ground. Not that she'd tell him.

Thinking of the Tuana, she started to
reach
for his location, only to realize it was unnecessary. Instead, she let the others go ahead, to a slight rise Veca had indicated as a place to stop, and waited expectantly.

Enris appeared around the wall of the gorge a moment later, a distant figure her inner sense recognized. She thought he raised a hand in salute, as if he'd seen her, too.

We'll wait for you,
she sent.

Don't. I'll catch up.
Despite the heavy pack she knew he carried, Enris was indeed approaching at a steady, distance-eating lope.
We can't be caught in the open, not with injuries. Who was hurt? How badly?

Aryl wondered how he'd known; she hadn't thought Chaun's flash of pain that strong.
Myris. Morla. Chaun's still unconscious.

And you? You don't
feel
right.

Offended, she tightened her shields to be sure whatever the Tuana
felt
was what she intended to share and nothing more.
There's nothing wrong with me but having to walk on your dirt.

Knew you'd see sense one day.
Beneath the amusement, real concern.
Keep them moving, Aryl. The storm's not done.

Thunder rolled down the valley, as if on cue.

 

No one argued, though the exiles delayed to let Veca and Rorn rig a sling for Chaun from ropes and a blanket. Gijs stretched out on his back while they worked, eyes closed. Like several of the others, Aryl forced herself to chew methodically on the Grona bread. Her aunt, who sat beside her, did not.

Aryl snapped off a piece, offering it to Myris. “Trust me. It tastes better now.”

“I couldn't.” Myris tried to smile. She fussed with her prized Grona scarf, its bright blue and yellow—dyes being one of that Clan's skills—now liberally stained with blood. The rain had washed most of it from her face, exposing a deep gash above her right brow. The eyelid below was horribly swollen and black. She was too pale, the darks of both eyes too large. Nothing they could help here, Aryl thought anxiously, refusing to believe it might be nothing they could help at all. “Stop worrying,” her aunt ordered, nothing wrong with her perception. “You're as bad as Ael.”

She considered her aunt, struck by an idea. “He's with Haxel. How much can you sense from him?”

Chosen were Joined. That permanent connection didn't make them more able to
send
words to one another across distance, since
sending
was related to individual Power. But Costa had assured her—many times—that the link gave each a special insight into the state of the other regardless of distance. Her brother had claimed to know when his beloved Leri was lonely or sad or happy. Aryl remembered being convinced this was only so Costa had a ready excuse to leave her for his Chosen.

Then she'd found her way into the
other place,
where connection mattered more than distance. She believed now, after Costa was dead and Leri one of the mindless Lost. Aryl's fingers sketched apology in her lap.

“You know perfectly well I can't
hear
him,” Myris protested. “I'm not like you or—or Taisal.”

“Yes, but can you tell me how he feels—right now?” She felt the other's puzzlement.

Seru, sitting nearby, leaned closer to catch the answer. Aryl smiled a welcome. Her cousin's interest in anything about Choice and being a Chosen was reassuringly normal.

Myris didn't appear to notice. Her hands clenched on her scarf, then she spoke in a whisper Aryl had to strain to hear. “Afraid. So afraid. He can hardly breathe.”

Seru scrambled back. “I told you we shouldn't go this way.” Not quite a shout, but everyone looked their way. “I told you!” That was. She lurched to her feet and broke into a clumsy run, but didn't go far, perhaps daunted by the glowering cloud and dead landscape on all sides. There she stood, back to her kind, head high and free of its hood; the freshening wind whipped desperate locks of her hair from its net, as expressive as any Chosen's.

Though Aryl ached to go to her, she stayed with Myris. “We're all afraid,” she told her aunt. “Do you feel anything more? Is he comfortable? Warm? Cold?” She had no idea what Chosen truly felt; she did know each Joining was unique. Myris might not have her sister's Power—but she had her own sensitivities. “Is he anxious to be with you, or for you to be with him?”

“What an odd—” Myris blinked. “With him,” she stated, her eyes brightening. “Yes. Wherever Ael is, he wants me there. They've found a place for us, Aryl!”

Though Aryl smiled with relief, her gaze lingered on Seru.

What did she see, that no one else could?

“N
ICE BRIDGE.”

Aryl ignored the comment and the deep laugh that went with it, though Veca gave Enris a dour look. Which was hardly fair. He'd been as good as his word, rejoining them soon after they'd begun to march again. He'd willingly taken a share of Chaun's awkward weight, too. They'd made better speed with his help.

Just as well. The wind had a bite to it, and smelled of lightning. Sheets of rain obscured the ridge on the other side of the valley; it wouldn't be long before it reached this one and their coats were still damp. She hoped it wouldn't freeze on them. Firstnight was upon them, its shadows barely darker than those of the clouds, sure to steal what remained of the day's warmth.

As Veca blithely predicted, there was a bridge near the mouth of the next gorge, but it was broken. Luckily for the exiles, the riverbed it had been built to span was dry and empty.

Aryl wasn't sure which bothered her more: the twin arches that ended in midair above a tumble of smashed stone, or the missing river.

No, she was sure. “Where's the water?”

“Who cares?” Veca pointed to the other side. “Haxel and the others aren't far now. Let's go.” She headed toward the riverbank; the others began to follow.

Aryl frowned. “Do rivers disappear in Tuana?”

Enris signaled Gijs he was ready to go, but words brushed Aryl's thoughts.
Show me.

She retrieved her memory of the raging torrent she'd seen from atop the ravine wall. “Veca saw it, too. Impossible to cross. It should be here.”

A flare of
curiosity
, as quickly damped. “A puzzle for another day,” Enris decided. To Gijs. “I swear he's gained weight.” He made a show of favoring his right shoulder as he slipped the sling's rope over what padding his coat and a folded scrap of blanket could provide, all the while careful not to jostle its passenger. “Sure he's not sneaking food on us?”

Gijs managed a weary smile at this. He'd refused to let anyone else take his share—he and Chaun were heart-kin.

Aryl tucked the unconscious Om'ray's hand inside his coat, pausing to
reach
and assess his condition as best she could. Chaun's pain had eased to a dull ache. She thought she might be able to rouse him, but didn't dare. Instead, she sent a little of her strength along that contact, more confident this time she was actually helping.

As she stood, she managed to touch Gijs and send him what she could. She thought he stood a bit straighter. Hoped, anyway.

Yawned.

She closed her mouth quickly, embarrassed. They were all bone-tired, but no one else moved like they felt their arms and legs were about to fall off, no one else yawned. She was young and stronger than most. They relied on her.

All of them.

Her fingers found Enris as he passed, but the instant she began to send him strength, his shields slammed in place, making him virtually invisible to her inner sense. Outwardly? He glared at her and jerked away from her touch. “What do you think you're doing?”

Furious. He was furious.

How? No one else had noticed. Why was he angry? Aryl took a step back, a stinging heat rushing to her cheeks. The step became a stagger, the ground unsteady beneath her feet. She swayed with it as she would with a branch in the M'hir.

What was happening?

Everything pulled away; voices muted, light dimmed, motions were slow and disconnected. She clung to what awareness she could, watching Enris shrug off the sling and come toward her. She put up her hands…he was angry…she'd done something wrong…why was she wrong…what was wrong…

As her eyes closed against her will, her shoulders were gripped with bruising force. Strength
flooded
her body until she gasped and jerked free, feeling her every muscle on fire. “What?!!” She stared at Enris, dumbfounded.

“We can't carry you both.” Low and fierce. “Never give what you need. Use more sense!”

He turned and picked up the sling, moving, to Aryl's restored perception, with his usual vigor.

Impossible.

He had just done for her, much more effectively, what she'd tried to do for her people. Enris Mendolar, Tuana unChosen, metalworker, couldn't know more about Power and its use than anyone she'd ever met. Couldn't
be
more powerful than an Adept.

Could he?

Aryl let several more exiles step in between before she followed, paying little attention to the route Veca had picked to cross the empty river.

She caught herself smiling, and had no idea why.

 

Beyond the fractured bridge, the valley narrowed and bent sharply toward Grona, as if hiding a secret. Even here, it would take the better part of a day to cross. Anyone doing so would face a wall more cliff than slope, a steep barrier Aryl thought might be entertaining to climb in better weather. Not in this. She tucked her hands inside her sleeves, blinking away snow—that misery having returned with a vengeance—and wondered why any Om'ray would live where the worst of all seasons could pass in the same day.

They were close now. Everyone could sense the others, that one was coming to meet them. Only Aryl—and his Chosen—knew it was her uncle, Ael sud Sarc. She peered through the whirling snow, hoping for a glimpse of the grove of stunted nekis she was sure she'd spotted from the ridge. She'd told no one else, but it must be their destination.

A tug on her sleeve. She glanced down to find Ziba, her face contorted, tears streaming down her cheeks. The child was distraught to the point of invisible, her emotions swamped by the need to return to her mother. Aryl bent to comfort her, to learn why Taen sent her while so upset, but the child spun out of her grasp and ran back down the line of march.

Seru. It had to be.

Aryl
reached
for her cousin and found…nothing.

She followed Ziba, careful not to run and draw attention. With the promise of shelter, everyone was walking with cheerful faces and renewed energy, including old Husni and Juo, who'd stayed together. Morla smiled at her, her injured wrist cradled to her chest, her solicitous Chosen hovering at her side.

Those coming last weren't smiling. Taen, Ziba now clinging to one arm. Tilip and young Fon Kessa'at, both looking worried. Together, they surrounded Seru, walking with her, but at a distance. As Aryl neared, she could see why.

Her cousin's eyes were closed. It had happened again.

Taen nodded a greeting. “Thanks for coming. I didn't know what to do—”

Seru's GONE.
With the desperate anguish of the very young.

Hush.
The anguish vanished behind shields as Taen hugged her daughter close. “One moment we were talking about Grona,” she said quietly, “the next, Seru shuts her eyes and starts babbling nonsense. A stranger's name. Something about frost and harvest. How there's work to be done and we have to hurry. When I asked what she meant, she didn't say another word.” A heavy sigh. “Better than screaming we're all going to die.”

She wasn't so sure, Aryl thought as she studied her cousin. Seru walked in a straight line—in the direction they all moved—but she lifted her feet too high as if forcing her way through drifts of snow. Not slowly either. Wherever she was going—wherever she thought she was going—she intended to get there without delay. “‘Work to be done,'” Aryl repeated. “What ‘work?' Why ‘hurry?”' She wasn't going to try to guess what “harvest.” Nothing could grow here worth eating.

“A dream,” Taen dismissed with a shrug, one hand holding Ziba to her side as they kept up. “You woke her before,” she prompted.

“I'm not sure she's asleep.” Weth could walk blind like this. But even if Seru had that Talent, how could she remember a place she'd never been? Aryl frowned. Should she touch her? Wake her?

Could she?

A flash of
joy
sped mind-to-mind through the exiles. Voices rose in greeting and relief.

Ael must be in sight.

“Go,” Taen said, smiling involuntarily. “We'll stay with her.”

Ziba's eyes widened. “No,” she protested. “You have to bring her back!”

Interesting choice of words, Aryl thought, giving the child a sharp look. “I'll do my best,” she promised, unwilling to lie. “First, we have to keep her moving. Can you do that, Ziba?”

“But everyone's stopped.” The child was right. Aryl cast an anxious look forward.

Taen laid her hand on her daughter's shoulder. Whatever passed between them settled the child. “We'll bring Seru. Go.”

Their trust weighed on her heart; the blank
nothing
where Seru should be was worse.

It didn't take long to find the delay. A silent knot of Om'ray stood around Ael, watching patiently as he held his Chosen close. Her uncle seemed oblivious to everything and everyone else, including the need to show the exhausted exiles the way out of the snow.

The other Chosen were allowing this—this utter waste of time. Aryl sighed and wiped snowdrops from her lashes, pondering the best way to interrupt their bliss. Surely, somewhere in the happy cloud of hair that presently shrouded both heads was her more sensible aunt.

Myris!
This with what force she dared.
We must go!

A blast of
heat
and
longing
and
belonging
assailed her. Aryl clamped down her shields, annoyed enough to stamp her foot. Chosen had no sense of priorities.

“Ael came that way.” Enris' lips twitched. They'd laid Chaun on the ground; Husni cradled his head in her lap. The Tuana pointed.

“That way” was somewhere ahead and to the left along this featureless plain, a destination obscured by swirling snow. Aryl
reached
. Haxel and the others were close. The mere thought of rest weakened her knees. The others could be in no better shape. Even Enris, despite his sturdy presence at her side, had to be wearing down. “We need to go,” she said quietly. “If you and Gijs pick up Chaun again, maybe the rest will get the idea.”

As quietly. “They'll follow you.”

No,
she wanted to say, but couldn't.

“Unfair,” he agreed, as if she had. “Doesn't change the weather. They've come this far because of you, Aryl Sarc. You can't stop leading them now, just because you wasted your strength.”

Lower lip secured between her teeth, where it couldn't tremble, Aryl glared at the Tuana. He gave her a wide, unrepentant grin.

She whirled and strode away, without waiting for anyone else.

Her feet crunched dead vegetation, the sound muted whenever she stepped in one of the growing piles of snow. Her breathing was too loud and too quick to her ears. Fine to believe they'd follow. What if no one noticed she'd left?

A tuft of taller vegetation ahead. Without slowing, she yanked it from the hard dirt, shook it clean, and tied it in a knot.

If Enris was wrong, she'd look a thorough fool.

If he was right…she stopped there.

Then, behind her, came the rustle and muted comments of people picking up their packs, sorting their marching order, starting to move. She blew a soundless whistle of relief.

A quicker set of limping steps as someone hurried to catch up. “Aryl—”

She glanced sideways. Ael's cheeks were flaming red. He began to gesture apology, and she touched his hand to stop it.

In the proper order of things, Myris wouldn't be walking in this nightmare of whirling snowdrops, shouldn't have been exposed to stupid lumps of ice, wouldn't have been hurt. More for her list. Aryl took back her hand, drawing her icy fingers within her sleeve. “Tell me you found a warm spot.”

Ael's joyful laugh startled her. “Oh, it's warm,” he promised. “Wait till you see. That way,” he added, indicating a line of darkness that curved ahead, then bent to their right.

She squinted through the snow, making out a steep slope of dirt, weathered and loose. This had to be the near edge of the wide depression she'd seen from the ridge, the one that ran the length of the valley. “Another dry river,” she guessed, astonished at its size.

“And frozen rain.” Ael spread his arms to encompass the landscape around them—what they could see of it through the snowdrops. “Nothing here should surprise us, Aryl.”

But something had. She
tasted
his excitement. Ael might be worried about Myris, but above all he anticipated the Om'rays' reaction when they saw…what?

“Warm,” she repeated. She'd settle for that.

 

The wind faded to a whimper around their ears. The snowdrops, contrarily, worsened, becoming larger. They stuck together in the air, drifting down in soft clumps, deadening all sound. One landed on Aryl's forehead and melted to soak her eye and cheek, a drip tracing her jaw and sliding down her neck. She shivered. Truenight was almost upon them. They should be in sight of Haxel and the shelter by now, but the steady fall closed like woven panels around the exiles. She kept
reaching
for the others, reassuring herself they were together despite the poor visibility. She wanted to go deeper, to learn if Seru had regained her senses, if Gijs and Enris were tiring, if Myris and Morla were in pain—but refrained. She couldn't help, even if she knew.

Shadows appeared to either side, indistinct through the snow, irregular in height and shape. The grove she'd seen—this had to be its start. Aryl quickened her pace. Strange, that the ground was smoother and more level than before.

Strange, too, that what she'd assumed were tall nekis stalks leaned against one another. Aryl blinked away snowdrops, frustrated.

A flicker of light beckoned ahead. Warmth, comfort. She sensed
relief
as those following saw it, too. Ael's smile was in his voice. “There it is. Wait till you see—”

Do you see?
The sending from Enris held none of the relief or joy of the rest.