Light cracked along a horizontal seam. The upper half lifted straight up to become a roof protecting those inside. Not Oud.
More strangers.
Aryl counted four: three seated and one standing to stare at her. That one looked like a giant wingless flitter, with plumes covering its body and an immense green eye on either side of its head. Its mouth was more like a stitler’s, bony and pointed. If she’d met it in the canopy, she’d have climbed out of reach. Quickly.
Now? Aryl instinctively glanced up for an escape route, hand over her mouth to breathe through the heavy rain, then looked down. The tower’s metal would be as treacherous as a wet branch. There was nowhere to go.
One of those seated came to join the flitter-stranger. Another Om’ray-who-wasn’t, like Marcus, equally not-there to Aryl’s sense. Another Human. This one shouted something. She couldn’t make out words over the rain. He beckoned impatiently to her.
New strangers. A new, more elaborate flying machine.
Aryl eased herself through the tower to the side of the machine and climbed inside, avoiding the hands that reached out for her.
Maybe, she told herself, shivering for the first time, they’d come to take her back.
The machine closed its protective cover and began to move.
Interlude
ENRIS TOSSED A STONE. Iglies skittered from his path, flashing alarm, only to turn and lurk in the shadows that fringed the tunnel. They watched him with a bold, disquieting interest he’d never seen before.
He’d never seen a tunnel like this either—the floor rough and loose and glowstrips hanging from occasional supports. It looked unfinished, as if freshly dug. He dropped his pack in a brighter area than most and eased himself down, hissing between his teeth. The iglies made their wet-smack noises, as if agreeing with his bruises and aching rib. Ignoring them all, he took a deliberate sip from his flask, then resealed it. There’d been none of the Oud water taps, or even a puddle, for the last few tenths. Best not to assume he’d find more water soon.
Had he made a mistake, taking whatever turn went most directly toward Vyna? It had seemed easy, at first. He’d ignored tunnels with upward slopes, gambling on another stretch free of Oud, willing to go deeper to elude anything more dangerous than iglies. He’d made reasonable time, despite a limp and the need to rest more and more often. The bleeding had stopped. He was safe. Wasn’t he?
Not if this tunnel was about to be reshaped. All Enris had to go on were runner stories—and who knew what to believe from them? He’d always heard the Oud left behind their technology, simply shutting off power before destroying what was there. What if the runners were wrong, and some tunnels were stripped by the Oud first, lights left on so they could do whatever they did to collapse ceilings and move walls . . . ?
He got up, doing his utmost not to feel the press of earth above him. There was no room to panic, not down here. “One step at a time,” Enris told himself, his voice startling the iglies to flight. “One step.”
It was several steps later when he thought he heard something moving behind him, something much larger than an iglie. When he turned to look back, all he saw was empty floor, scattered with stone and shadow. “Bad as Yuhas,” Enris muttered to himself, almost wishing the other—and his broom—were nearby.
Almost. He was alone and hoped to stay that way. The jitters were normal. He picked up his pace as best he could on the uneven footing, searching ahead for any sign of an intersecting tunnel, preferably one leading above ground. Down here too long, Enris decided, if he was hearing things.
Another sound, not imagined. As he looked over his shoulder, he realized with dismay the strange clattering wasn’t coming from behind him at all. It was coming from above his head.
Enris looked up and found himself staring at an Oud.
Despite its bulk, the creature looked quite at home. It ignored him, busy doing something to the ceiling of the tunnel. Enris took a few slow, careful steps to move from directly beneath it. He could smell it now, that mix of old oil and dust. Unlike the ones who visited Tuana, this wore no clothing. The revealed body was faintly ribbed down its entire soft length, with patches of darker pigment where a spine might be.
It moved abruptly and he backed another step, but the Oud had merely gone forward to a new patch of ceiling. Where it had been was now smooth, any imperfections in the stone polished away. The clattering noise continued. It was, he realized with amazement, trimming the rock away with its appendages. Somehow, the creature must collect any dust or fragments inside its body, for nothing fell loose.
Om’ray had wondered what machines the Oud employed to build their maze of tunnels. Was this at least part of the answer: that they used their own bodies? He wished he could tell his family, his Clan.
They wouldn’t listen to him. Once on Passage, an unChosen couldn’t be welcomed back by his own.
The creature went about its business, either oblivious to him, or respectful of the token he carried. Enris gave it one last look, then kept walking.
He encountered more and more Chewer Oud, as he came to call them. All were busy nibbling away the roughness of ceiling, walls, and floor; none reacted to his presence in any way he could tell. After a while, Enris ignored them, too, walking around those who blocked his path as he sought an exit.
So he was astonished when he went around the next turn in the tunnel to have one pour itself from the ceiling to confront him.
“Where is?” it demanded, rearing up to expose its talking appendages.
Thinking it meant the token, he reached for the disk, only then noticing this wasn’t like the other Oud—its body was draped in fabric.
And if an Oud could be familiar, he had a horrible feeling this one was. “Where is what?” Enris replied, hoping he was wrong.
“Metalworker, is.”
Not wrong. Somehow, the same Oud had found him. Enris swallowed, wishing he wasn’t tired and sore. Better still, to be clever. Or brave. The truth was all he dared. “I’m not a metalworker now. I’m on Passage. The device is still in Tuana, with the other metalworker.”
“Best are,” it said, rearing higher. The clattering sounds from other Oud nearby paused, as if they eavesdropped. “We decide other!”
“My father is the best,” he said, desperate to calm the creature. “Om’ray go on Passage when Council decides, not Oud. That’s the Agreement. It’s my turn. You must let me pass.”
“Badbadbadbad.”
He couldn’t argue with it there. “Please. Let me leave.”
It loomed over him; Enris didn’t dare move back. “Strangers and Om’ray, together, are,” it said, clearly upset. “Badbadbadbad.”
All he asked was sense from the thing. Was that too much? “I don’t understand,” Enris said. Strangers? “What strangers?” he demanded. “The unChosen?” The two from Yena, Yuhas and the quieter Tyko? Was that what disturbed it? Unfamiliar Om’ray?
“Not Om’ray. Strangers. Strangers! Want device. Where is?” The Oud reared violently, bashing into a support. The wood groaned and a glowstrip attached at one end fell to the floor, its light extinguished. “Where is!? Where is!!?? Find it NOW!!!”
Terrified for his father—for his Clan, if the Oud went to Tuana in this state—Enris took off his pack and dumped its contents on the tunnel floor. “See? I don’t have it!” he shouted desperately. “You didn’t tell me I had to keep it. You told me to find out what it is! I did. Do you hear me. I know what it is.”
Mid-rear, the Oud paused, its many limbs folding together.
Enris hoped this was an improvement. “It holds voices,” he said. “There were words in it. Sounds an Om’ray can sense inside. Do you understand me?”
It lowered itself slightly. “Our words?”
He froze.