She did rest. The dresel coursing through her system satisfied a craving she’d had so long, she’d forgotten. Knowing she was being treated with the same care lavished on Tikitik mothers was—if not reassuring, for Aryl didn’t know what that meant—at least sounded better than being a prisoner or food in storage. Rather than strain her eyes against the darkness, she closed them. Really, it wasn’t that bad standing up inside a stalk. The bindings were rather comfortable, in a limb-numbing way.
Aryl.
Taisal’s sending was strained, as if she used all her strength. Aryl immediately sent her own thought flying to meet it, the result a sure, solid link within the wild darkness of the other. She was too grateful to be alarmed by her growing control, grateful not to have been abandoned. Here.
Then she sensed enclosing walls, a steady light. Her mother was at ease, though her legs ached. You’ve returned to the Cloisters.
A moment’s discomfiture. Haxel insisted. Her scouts will watch for any Tikitik, to summon their Speaker.
No one was coming for her.
Aryl fought an irrational despair. She understood. No one could come. Yena’s resources were stretched to the breaking point. There was no one to spare. The distance was too great.
She’d given her mother—which meant Council and the Adepts—a way to watch her from safety.
She understood that, too.
What do they want?
The Speaker, preparing for negotiation. Her mother did love her, Aryl thought, rather numb. There were simply priorities attached.
I saw the strangers, she sent.
Startlement. Clearly, this wasn’t what Taisal had expected.
Aryl’s lips twitched in a half smile her mother couldn’t see. Probably, she decided, just as well. Did you think they took me because of what I did to Bern?
The hollow feel in the other was answer enough. No wonder Taisal had been frantic to find her, and Council willing to risk its Speaker. They must have believed the worst. Aryl found herself without sympathy.
Who did you see? Where?
Words weren’t enough. Aryl deliberately let her mind dwell on those moments high in the nekis, her glimpses of the black creature and the one who wasn’t Om’ray—yet was. She felt the images leap from her mind.
An answering shock flashed through the other. How are you doing this?
Her next-to-be Forbidden Talent? Aryl kept the thought and its suddenly bitter taste private. It doesn’t matter. These are the strangers, Mother, she sent. They must be. They have a flying machine like the device at the Harvest. The Tikitik must plan to ask me questions about what I saw.
A waiting stillness. They remained linked, mind to mind, within the other place. Then, with an underlying reluctance, Or the Tikitik assume this Om’ray-seeming stranger is one of us. You were in the same grove. They may suspect you share some connection.
One of us? He wasn’t real, Aryl reminded her mother. Perhaps the memory hadn’t been complete.
Taisal must have felt her incredulity. Pay attention, Daughter. Not all the world is defined by Om’ray. There is a secret task set Adepts when they accept the ‘di’ and that is to watch for change in our neighbors as well as ourselves. We listen for their Power; we taste their reaction to ours. That is why we believe the Tikitik cannot sense our inner presence. As they are unreal to us, we are unreal to them.
It was like the long, confusing arguments about the source of Power and the shape of the world her mother used to have with her father at truenight. They’d trade obscure phrases until Aryl wearied of pretending to listen and went to bed. But she wasn’t that young anymore. Somehow she knew her mother—no, the Yena Speaker—was trying to educate her quickly, give her what she could to help understand those who’d sealed her in the nekis.
They can’t tell us from the stranger? she ventured.
They can’t tell the stranger from us. Foreboding. Whatever he does, the Tikitik could blame on Om’ray as well.
Aryl finally felt some empathy for the old ones on Council. Not only did they have to worry about the future of Yena while concealing a growing number of Forbidden Talents from their own kind, as well as the Tikitik—now they faced a new kind of being they’d never imagined existed.
Taisal had shared this, and her reply held an undertone of laughter. I doubt they feel as ancient as you think them, Daughter. Now rest—it’s almost truenight. Concern. Will you be safe?
Would she? The chamber seemed to press in on all sides; the lack of light a danger signal to any Yena. If she thought about her body, it itched and ached in so many places she’d lost count. Still, the Tikitik viewed this as a safe place and she could hardly argue. Where was safer than inside a rastis?
I’m safe. The word should have meant sitting at the finely polished Sarc table . . . listening to wysps through the gauze . . . Aryl sighed with longing.
Then, sleep, little one. It’s late. I’ll get you home.
With that, their connection was severed. Her mother’s skill within the other was growing, too.
Sleep? Nothing was further from her mind. Frustrated, Aryl struggled to free herself but succeeded in nothing more than growing warm and aggravating one shoulder. However she was wedged or tied in place, it wasn’t coming loose without outside help.
She could shout—the Tikitik seemed attentive. She could claim an injury. Certainly she needed a bath. She drew breath to call the creature and then hesitated, unsure why.
Something. Some sound.
She leaned her head forward again, and held still. Slowly, her heart settled.
It was like soft rain, at first. But the beat—it was more organized, almost rhythmic. It came closer, grew louder. Like feet running down a bridge, only more feet than were possible at once.
More and more. An unending procession of hurried steps, as if their owners couldn’t delay, couldn’t wait.
Then the first screams came, muffled through the wood.
Aryl jerked back, her eyes wide in the dark.
It must be dark outside as well. Truenight. When the Lay’s most dreaded hunters swarmed from the water in their millions, to climb every buttress, stalk, and trunk.
They were climbing her rastis. She could hear them. Thousands upon thousands of feet. The worst death she could imagine was a layer of Tikitik spit away.
Her mother’s party had had glows, Aryl told herself. They’d been high. Too high for the swarms. Haxel knew how to survive. They’d have watched for aerial hunters, but they’d been safe from swarms.
While she had Tikitik spit.
The laugh burst from deep inside her.
The sound, strained and too loud, scared Aryl more than the drumming feet. She pressed her lips together, used her teeth to hold them, tasted blood and kept biting. She couldn’t lose control. Not over her mind.
She wouldn’t.
The lonely battle. That was what Om’ray called it, this struggle with oneself.
Children were taught its methods; unChosen practiced them into habit. The Chosen learned ways to accommodate that mind forever Joined to theirs, but this war was always fought alone. A race able to share thoughts was only as sane as each individual mind. There were reasons the Adepts cared for the Lost or the mind-damaged. Only their Power could control that of another. Only they had the strength and training to protect the inner whole that was Yena.
Aryl struggled to focus on the here and now, however frightening. To retreat into the false comfort of memory, or worse, let what-was-Aryl be lost in the other place would be defeat. There was no one here to pull her back from either abyss.