“Do Om’ray eyes see so poorly? Do you not see its smoke?”
Aryl held back a retort and looked more intently. For what, she had no idea.
Then she saw what Traveler meant. What appeared to be tendrils of cloud were rising in the middle of the lake, from the water’s surface. Smoke? Each spiraled, slowly, higher and higher, but stopped in midair well before real clouds began. Some tendrils were thin; one was fat at its middle.
“It can’t be smoke,” she decided out loud. “It rises too slowly. And there’s no bright flame underneath.”
Traveler’s head shot up. “You’ve seen fire?” No mistaking the threat in its voice or posture.
“Lightning struck near the Cloisters,” Aryl explained quickly. “All of us went to see.” It had been terrifying—and beautiful. So was this “lake.”
“Are there rastis on the other side?”
The Tikitik lowered its head in slow stages, all eyes on her. “Oud are on the other side,” it said at last. She wasn’t sure how this answered her question, but it seemed to think so.
Aryl studied the lake, growing more curious instead of less. The Oud had machines to fly—this water should be no barrier to them, though she didn’t know how long their machines could stay in the air. Longer than a fich. She leaned as far as she could over the side of her mount away from the Tikitik, holding the post with one arm and leg. She tried to see through the swirling silt, afloat with vegetation torn loose by the ossts ahead. “Are there hunters here, like the Lay?” she shouted from that position. When the Tikitik didn’t answer, she pulled herself up again. “Are there?” she repeated.
“Where the reeds grow, yes. Farther in—” its eyes focused on distance, “—see the line where the surface begins to sparkle? From there, the Lake of Fire contains only water, without bottom, without life. We give it our dead. And those who disappoint.”
Not a casual explanation, Aryl judged, both hands on the post as her mount lurched after another mouthful. Tikitik might be invisible to her other sense, but this one, at least, was expressing itself perfectly.
She was being taken somewhere for a purpose of theirs. Whatever it might be, she’d heard the cost of failure.
They rode through deepening shadow, the sun touching distant glints from the Lake of Fire as it sank below the canopy. The clouds turned yellow, then pink. A line of darkness began to climb from the horizon. Aryl hadn’t made up her mind if it was beautiful or frightening, to see the sky’s changes firsthand.
She did know how this time would be within the canopy. Yena would be heading for shelter. Glows would brighten, forbidding the swarms.
Aryl closed her eyes and reached gently, without insisting. Mother . . .
But Taisal wouldn’t allow their minds to link. Aryl stopped trying, guessing her mother was in a Council meeting or with other Adepts; neither would be good times to be interrupted.
She didn’t, she sighed to herself, have anything new to say.
Aryl clung to the osst’s post as the insatiable beast lunged for another bite. It never stopped eating. For some reason, that made it easier to sip its blood, for that was the only food or drink the Tikitik offered.
Home. Myris and Ael would be sharing their scant ration of dresel powder over supper. Talking about her, maybe. A little concerned, but wasn’t Aryl on a kind of Passage? Maybe they’d think her famous, the first Chooser-to-Be to leave her clan.
After all, her mother would have told them she was safe.
No, Aryl told herself, abruptly certain, Taisal would not.
The Yena Speaker would keep her secret. She would never reveal being able to contact her daughter over such a distance, let alone her use of the Forbidden Dark. To do either would only encourage Tikva di Uruus and her supporters, risk the Agreement her mother cared so much about.
Taisal would let Myris and Ael, Seru, all the rest of her family and friends, think her dead first.
Aryl sniffed miserably.
Interest.
What? She shook her head. Nothing. Still, Aryl concentrated, opening her inner awareness.
Yes, there.
A wisp . . . a hint of another presence in her mind. Lurking. Hiding from her in the other.
It wasn’t Taisal.
Aryl threw herself at it, like a hook through air.
The hint disappeared before she could touch it. That hint.
Another in the roiling other, the merest glimpse, as if she’d seen something almost break the surface of the lake. As if her attention startled it, it was gone. The Dark sang its tempting song, luring her to forget herself, to let herself thin and be consumed.
Aryl pulled free with an effort.
Spies? Set to watch her . . . or her mother. The Adepts?
Or was it something much worse.
She stared out at the line of monstrous beasts, splashing their mindless way between grove and lake, the froth from their steps gleaming briefly before disappearing.
Where, she wondered with a shiver, did the minds of the Lost go? What was left of them? Were they fragments, swept and spun by those remorseless currents, or something more, something that clung to, if not consciousness, then purpose?
Did they hunger for their own kind? Was that the source of the lure?
Aryl couldn’t stop shivering. Taisal had been right to warn her against the Dark. She—
“Do you require something?”
Startled, Aryl glared at the Tikitik. “Yes,” she snapped, her fear turning to anger. “I need to know why you’ve taken me from my home. To know where we are. To know where we’re going. To know why—” her voice cracked. “What do you want from me?”
Its head reared up and back. The other four Tikitik, so silent till now she’d almost forgotten them, broke into agitated hisses.
“You asked,” Aryl said in a voice that sounded thoroughly sullen even to herself. Oh, she was handling all this well.
But it wasn’t fair. She was supposed to be home, in her bed. Not sitting, her legs cramped and backside numb, on a creature she hadn’t known existed before today. All she’d wanted to do was see the sky for herself.
And now even that was disappearing, swallowed by the dreadful black of truenight.
As for the connection to her mother, her one link . . . did she dare touch the other again, given what might be watching?
“Are you ill?”
Not for an instant did she dare believe it kindness. Nothing her mother had ever said about the Tikitik offered that hope. Self-interest, perhaps. She had a role to play—Thought Traveler was involved in that role, whatever it was.
“It’s almost truenight,” Aryl told it. “Am I safe?”
Its head lowered back to normal, its shoulders hiding it in shadow. “What do you fear?”
Where would it like her to start? Aryl asked herself, but settled for, “The swarms, for one. You said they could reach here. Last night you sealed me inside a rastis. Don’t tell me being on top of an osst will protect me.” Or the osst, for that matter. She’d seen the remnants of what the swarms did to large, furred creatures who didn’t or couldn’t climb beyond their reach.
“You are safe. They cannot tolerate light.”
“What light?” The clouds had lost their color; the lake itself vanishing gray into grays. “The sun’s almost to Grona. Do you have glows?”
“The Makers will rise.” In the dimness, she could see its left arm pointing up and ahead. Traveler sounded supremely confident.
She’d probably sounded just as sure to Joyn, knowing nothing of what was to come. Thinking of his small trusting face, his warmth wrapped around hers, Aryl was overwhelmed by longing. All she wanted was to be home—away from the stench and unceasing movement of the osst, her bewildering surroundings, and above all her helplessness.