Aryl shook her head. “No. These are real words.” She touched her own mouth, then gestured to the other. “Those are not real.”
A moment of silence, then, “Your words, real you. Our words, real us.” This last with a sweep of a claw around the room. “All words, real both. Words,” a shrug that rattled its tools, “new. New words is good—are good. Is this better?”
Aryl found herself on her feet. Janex remained still, as if not to alarm her further. “Everyone uses the same words,” she insisted. “Everyone in the world speaks the same. Om’ray, Tikitik, Oud.”
“Oud words, us,” Janex offered promptly, in a pleased tone. “Teach all. Expert, I. Aryl is Om’ray. Oud words, different pattern. Om’ray complex. More meaning. Good.”
Strangers, the Tikitik called them. How strange, she hadn’t fully appreciated until this moment. Their food threatened to leave her stomach, and Aryl closed her mouth tightly, breathing through her nose.
“Aryl not afraid, please.”
She’d seen remembered images of the reclusive Oud, knew they followed the Agreement, communicated through a Speaker with the other races, allowed Passage across their lands. She knew little more—had cared to know nothing more about them. What could they matter to a Yena who would live her life high in the canopy? She would never meet an Oud.
The Carasian had. More than met—if she understood what it said, the strangers had learned the language spoken by all on Cersi from the Oud.
Aryl sank back down on her too-solid chair, in a building of strangers, on a platform in the middle of the Lake of Fire, and realized anything was possible now. “I’m not afraid,” she said as calmly as she could. “Tikitik and Om’ray use words as I do. The Oud—” What had Costa said? “—the Oud use as few words as possible. They can be difficult to understand.” She thought that a tactful hint to the other.
“Difficult? Aryl kind.” Janex pounded the table, threatening their plates. “Oud difficult, us. Confusing talk. Now we difficult, Aryl? Sorry,” this said with what appeared a sincere regret. “Rules I hunt. Rules for words. Oud use no rules.”
She had to smile. “You’re a Speaker, aren’t you?”
“Speaker, me?” Janex’s eyes milled around briefly. That note of amusement was back in its voice. “Good, is. Janex Triad Third. Recorder and comtech. Talk, talk, talk. Pilip, Triad Second.” The stick-stranger looked up at this, strands of blue hanging from its mouth, then muttered something unpleasant-sounding through that mouthful before looking away again. “Janex is Carasian. Pilip is Trant. Better?”
“Better,” affirmed Aryl, trying to fix these new names in memory. At the rate they were multiplying, she feared it was hopeless. She didn’t have the Carasian’s obvious Talent with words. “Marcus is Triad First,” she said, proud to have remembered that. Whatever it meant. A rank, she guessed. Like the scouts.
“Good!” The Carasian clicked its big claw. “Pilip scantech. Finder. Marcus, Triad First, Analyst.”
Different names, an entirely different—if she understood correctly—set of words. Their technology—and the Oud involved? She didn’t think Thought Traveler would be pleased, not pleased at all. As for Yena Council? Aryl decided not to think about them.
“Are there others here?” she indicated the room. “Oud?”
The giant creature’s head rocked from side to side. “Oud, no. Others?” She thought it hesitated, as if it didn’t want to reveal how many they were. Aryl wasn’t sure why the answer would matter. “Others.” This with a large claw raised overhead. “Others.” The claw pointed through the window.
That wasn’t helpful. Aryl decided to assume they came from somewhere else—from exactly where being a question she wasn’t in a hurry to have answered. “You’re on Passage?”
“Understand not.”
Already a habit to correct it. “I don’t understand.”
“ ‘I don’t understand’ Passage.”
Aryl leaned back in her seat, more thoughtful than shocked. “When Om’ray go from place to place,” she mimed walking with her hands, “it is called Passage.”
“Aryl is on Passage.”
No, she’d been kidnapped and dropped into the lake to spy on them, but as this explanation couldn’t lead to anything but harder questions, Aryl settled for, “I’m looking for something.”
“Seekers, we also,” announced Marcus, sitting beside her. “Food good?”
“I liked the—sombay,” Aryl said, finally recalling the name of the drink. “Seekers.” Were they scouts of some kind? “What do you seek?”
“Show Aryl?” The Human jumped back to his feet.
All three strangers were looking at her now, Marcus with an expression that, on an Om’ray face, would be hopeful. Why?
There was, Aryl sighed inwardly, only one way to find out. Maybe she’d find the Tikitik’s answer at the same time.
She rose to her feet, her new boots making a faint shhhh on the floor. “Show me.”
Chapter 22
ARYL ...
Aryl didn’t stop walking at the inner touch, but her attention was no longer on her surroundings. She’d been waiting for privacy to contact her mother. To be honest, she’d been waiting for courage too.
It seemed Taisal could no longer wait, so Aryl opened her mind to the other, making the link. Mother.
Her mother’s sending was colored by emotion; a residue of anger mingled with concern. What has happened? Are you all right?
Mother . . . we’re not alone here! As if forming the words made them true, Aryl could barely contain her fear, torn by the urge to somehow look beyond their link into the seething darkness. What—who—might she find?
Almost scorn. We’re never alone here, daughter. This is the hollow between minds, where the dead linger and the Lost hide. Don’t be afraid. They’re harmless unless you follow or answer them. Don’t look for anyone. Those here . . . they’re no longer Om’ray. They are shadows. Nothing more.
The voice of experience? Aryl shuddered. I won’t. I won’t.
Tell me where you are.
With the strangers. Aryl sent her view of the lake and platform.
Something hard gripped her around the waist, shattering her concentration and the link.
“What do!??”
Aryl blinked and found herself suspended in the air in one of the Carasian’s great claws. Its eyes moved aside to reveal two knifelike jaws as long as her arms. Aryl squeezed her eyes closed and tried not to scream. “What do!?” it roared at her again.
“Careful, Janex!” Marcus cautioned. Aryl peered down at him, hoping for rescue, but he frowned at her, not the Carasian, before uttering a string of his own words.
Janex, its focus never leaving Aryl, answered—mostly—in real words. “Grist! Aryl grist different. Better now.” The last word was calmer, as if Janex had taken time to think something through and been relieved. Sure enough, the claw eased Aryl back to the floor.
She smacked the claw the instant it released her. “Don’t do that!” she scolded, as furious as she’d been scared. This was the stranger she’d almost trusted. Now? Aryl backed against the wall, her arms tight around her waist, though it hadn’t hurt her.
It could have. She’d underestimated the strength of that unusual body. And maybe something else. Had it somehow detected her connection to Taisal? Aryl tried opening her inner sense, to feel anything from the Carasian’s mind.
Chaos!
“Ouch!” she exclaimed, retreating behind the tightest possible shields, her eyes wide.