“Faster. Faster.” The Oud dropped back to the floor and humped away.
“I can’t go faster!” he shouted after it. How long had he been running after the creature? Half a day? A full fist? Time had no meaning below ground. Too long. The Oud disappeared around a bend, and Enris staggered to a jog. Always the same. The monster insisted he keep up, yet couldn’t comprehend that Om’ray had only two legs.
“Two legs!” he bellowed. “Two!”
He’d argued with it, thrown rocks at it, laid down and ignored it, desperate to rest. Such futile protests ended the same way, with the Oud looming over him and a clawlike appendage seizing him—by what didn’t matter—to drag him along in the dirt until he moved on his own. Enris had quickly learned to protect his head; the Oud, not so quickly, learned not to grab him by a leg.
He’d dropped his precious pack. It wouldn’t let him retrieve it. He’d found a water tap and had thrown himself in front of it, drinking in great gulps. It wouldn’t let him finish. In final insult, the Oud was leading him away from Vyna.
“You . . . want . . . to . . . kill . . . me,” he panted. “Try . . . a . . . rock.”
The Oud covered ground with incredible speed; it knew this landscape. Still, Enris would have chanced trying to escape down another tunnel but for one thing.
The token.
Without it, he was already dead. He couldn’t move on his own through Oud territory. He couldn’t enter Tikitik. It was doubtful another Clan would admit him. His own . . .
“Give it back!” he begged the mass of gray ahead of him. In answer, it humped away faster.
Why take it? In his coherent moments, he wondered if the Oud was supposed to carry it for him, if he had an escort—albeit one completely ignorant of the physical limitations of Om’ray. At others, he worried this was a homicidal game, the true end for all who left on Passage, that the Oud led him to a pit where he would fall, fall and land on the bodies of those who’d just left, Irm and Eran, bodies atop a pile of the bones of other unChosen.
It said a great deal about his state of mind that he preferred either to the alternative, that the Oud was sane and had good reason for this panicked flight.
When the Oud finally stopped, Enris didn’t. Half asleep, he collided with its back end with enough momentum to send him flying to land on his. He sat there, blinking away dust, and waited to see what would happen next.
“Here are.”
“Here” looked like everywhere else they’d been. A newer tunnel, with lighting, heat, and water, the walls and ceiling ready for Chewer Oud to polish them smooth. He wiped his sweating face against his sleeve and kept waiting.
Another Oud approached them, naked and moving with its body pressed to the floor. It stopped alongside the other. His Oud—not that Enris wanted the creature, but he’d started thinking of it that way—reared and smacked the newcomer with its front/head end. The blow wasn’t light; the newcomer tumbled over and over until it struck the wall.
It immediately scuttled back on its little legs to take the same position as before.
His Oud, still half reared, patted it. The other quivered as if in joy. Enris looked away, fearing this was the prelude to Oud sex—a subject Om’ray knew nothing about. He had no intention of being the first.
“Things, yours.”
The voice startled him awake. Sure enough, the newcomer Oud held out his bag. Enris grabbed it, digging inside for a flask. Only once he’d had a good, long drink, then another, did he bother to look at the creatures again.
And was just in time to see the newcomer take the token from His Oud and convey it down to wherever they stored things. “Wait!”
Too late. The newcomer rose to the ceiling, took hold, and scurried away, upside down.
Now he was to chase that one? Maybe his was worn out. Enris forced himself to his feet, though he’d lost feeling in them some time ago, and cursed the Oud. He shifted his bag to one shoulder and started walking.
“Mine now,” His Oud exclaimed. “Token other. Find no. Safe.”
He stopped moving before it could seize him. “I don’t understand.”
“Strangers and Om’ray. Come.”
“Let me rest first,” he begged, beyond shame. “Please. I can’t run anymore.”
“Not run.”
He should have specified no dragging, Enris thought, tense as the creature came closer.
It moved beyond him to the left-hand wall, then disappeared. “Come!” he heard.
Dead or dreaming, he assured himself, but curiosity brought him stumbling to the wall.
Which wasn’t a wall, Enris discovered. Or, rather, there were two walls, identical and overlapping, which gave the illusion of one. The gap between had to be a tight fit for the Oud, the end of which he watched disappear again.
Keeping a hand on the stone, Enris followed, this time not surprised to find His Oud had simply turned itself right around to move through another gap between walls. The Oud version of an alleyway? A shortcut between neighboring tunnels? How many had he missed . . . ?
He stepped out into what wasn’t a tunnel, though the entrances of several met here. Light—real sunlight—poured from above. Enris looked up to find himself standing at the bottom of an immense tower, one wall broken by windows of irregular shape and size, the other four solid. There were Chewer Oud clustered around the topmost windows. From this distance, he couldn’t tell what they were doing. The construction was of uneven stone and earth, as if the Oud had done little more than hollow a mound from within. How such a pile could be strong was a mystery.
Like everything else, he thought, staring at those pieces of sky with a longing that made him tremble. He reached and felt some relief. Pana was closer than Tuana, Yena and Amna almost as near. Vyna? He turned his face to it. Not so distant now. The Oud had done him a favor.
If he survived the kindness.
“Come.” His Oud was waiting beside another tunnel mouth, tapping impatiently. “Comecomecome.”
Enris walked across the broad floor, fine dust isolating every length of sunbeam. He shuddered at the relative darkness of the tunnel, for the first time understanding Yuhas’ horror of such places, but didn’t dare hesitate.
This tunnel was another of the rough type, with only a few loose glowstrips. The light from those was soon overwhelmed by brightness ahead. The tunnel became a ramp. Enris found himself walking more and more quickly, despite the slope and his exhaustion. This had to lead outside.
And it did, though not to any view he’d expected. Enris stopped with his Oud, gazing at a confusion of vehicles, most in motion. Some were the platform type, bearing Oud dressed in the fabric and clear head domes he’d last seen in Tuana. Others bore long oval shapes of metal, resembling mechanical Oud. He dodged back and coughed at the dust as one of these swept by too near and quickly for comfort. There were some with sides taller than two Om’ray, and small round ones that could pass beneath the others. He couldn’t keep track. The sound of treads and scraping metal was a constant din.
All this within a great walled circle, penetrated by ramps, and domed by sky.
His Oud was on the move again. Enris followed, staying as close as he dared. They went around the outer edge, to his relief. There was no discernible order to the traffic, and collisions were frequent. Those involved merely backed and tried again to pass one another. An Om’ray wouldn’t last long.
A loud roar preceded an overhead shadow. Enris ducked instinctively before gazing up in wonder. A flying vehicle. Everyone knew the Oud had vehicles to travel through the air. Such made regular passes over the fields, though at a considerable height. He’d never seen one this close. It looked impossible, heavy and thick, with ridiculous little wings. Nothing, Enris vowed to himself, would make him trust his life to that.