“We don’t have time. Wake her.”
“I would if I could. This is more like retreat than sleep.”
“She’s unChosen. A child. I thought only Adepts could disappear within their own thoughts.”
“Truer to say only Adepts first learn how to return by their own will.” A sharp breath. “Aryl is no longer a child. We must bring . . .”
The voices left.
Or Aryl stopped hearing.
“Can she hear me?” Warm, worried.
Aryl buried her head within her arms, pressing their bare, cold flesh over her ears. Not that voice. Never that voice! She hummed inwardly to drown it.
Aryl?
The mental voice was worse, rippling with its own grief. Aryl did her best to shut it out, too.
How could she hear Bern, sense his mindvoice, yet not feel his existence? He couldn’t be here and not here . . . but where . . .
The wrongness overwhelmed her—she slipped toward a darkness of her own. It was so close. She knew exactly where to find the seething black cloud. There. She had only to let it take her, pull her from whatever kept her in this empty, soulless place.
ARYL!
The Other was there, this time not to offer the surcease of sleep, but to force her back from that edge. No matter how Aryl fought, she couldn’t evade it. She tried hiding in memory— the Other refused that comfort. She thrust out her pain and fury—the Other took it and gave back something that offered peace.
Peace . . . but she was still alone. So terribly alone.
Instinct reached for the first bond, the oldest. Mother! Aryl cried. Why have you left me?
HERE. The word rang like a bell. We are all here. Come back, Aryl. This is the way. Follow me.
Where? I’m alone!!! This with all the despair and longing in her heart.
I know. But you can come back. I know how. I’ll show you.
She knew that sound . . . a wysp, trilling the arrival of truenight . . .
Costa brought it home for her, its eyeless head seeking shelter under his big arm. A fragile creature, pale and long of wing. Aryl thought it ugly and refused to touch it.
He insisted she stay with him, with the creature, refusing to explain. Over her protest, he disconnected the power cell from the room’s glows, glows that would otherwise shine their soft, steady light over panel wall and rail, that made the bridges leading between homes safe—if prone to attracting everything else that loved light. In an alarming, unfamiliar darkness, Aryl twitched and fidgeted and wished her brother normal. Finally, bored, she almost dozed.
Until the wysp began to trill. Sitting up, she tried to see. Costa’s warm hand found and covered hers, comfort and an urge for quiet.
The trill continued—it was as if three singers lived within that slender throat, each with its own range and tone, competing to see who could make the sweeter sound. She held her breath, afraid it would stop if it heard.
It sings to greet the real dark, the truenight, little sister, he sent, along with a vision of strange tiny lights against a black void. Without eyes, despite the canopy’s shadow, it knows when the sun has truly left us and when it returns.
Aryl listened to the song, then frowned anxiously. Where does the sun go?
To Grona Clan, to give them daylight while we sleep.
The singer increased its volume, lovely but loud.
Aryl yawned. Who could sleep through that?
Costa’s laugh silenced the wysp. That night, Aryl dreamed of chasing the sun over the tops of the rastis, her arms become wings . . .
She blinked, once, twice, slowly realizing she’d dreamed a dream. There was no trill. There wouldn’t be. Soft beams of sunlight filtered through the window gauze.
Midday.
It was abruptly important, why she couldn’t say, to pay the utmost attention to her fingers and toes, to straighten one leg at a time, to ease her body slowly from its curl.
Gah, stiff all over.
She licked her lips. And thirsty.
That sensation aroused others, each cautious. Her eyes were dry and sore. Aryl rubbed at them, feeling grit on her lashes. Her hair was loose. Her hands—she stopped and sniffed. Dresel.
Everything smelled of it.
She found herself on hands and knees, staring down at a wrinkled sheet, her mind helplessly seeking its place within an empty world . . .
... and suddenly, wonderfully, finding it.
Her mother. There, nearby. Above, in her room.
Aryl reached farther, her inner sense touching those warm spots of life that marked the Yena. But they were frail lights, afloat in a seething, churning dark. Now afraid, she struggled to see nothing but those lights, denying that place even as part of her responded to its call and wanted nothing more than to . . .
She fought and won, head hanging between her shoulders. Shudders of relief racked her body. To be whole again was what mattered, to feel the world and her place in it. Aryl clung to that, wanting to know every Om’ray. More carefully now, avoiding that eager darkness, she searched for them all, adding the faint glow of distant clans to the steady warmth of those close and dear and known.
Too few.
And some of those had become—strange. Five. She sought them, found them. Not where they should be . . . but farther away, all together.
The Cloisters? But that was where Adepts lived, apart, honing their Power. Where they sheltered the mindless and the lost.
Aryl tasted their names and finally understood. When Chosen Om’ray died, the loss was always more.
She dimmed her perception and lay flat, curling into a ball, tears soaking the sheet.
She sensed her kind again. She’d regained the world.
And remained alone.
Chapter 4
“I DON’T REMEMBER.”
“Try again.”
Aryl slumped forward, elbows on her knees, and covered her face with her hands. It felt as if they’d been doing this for tenths. She remained mute, beyond argument. Not that arguing with her mother was likely to work. Taisal di Sarc, Adept and Speaker for Yena, back down first?
The world would end before that happened, Aryl thought bitterly.
“You must.”
She didn’t move.
Aryl.
“No!” She pushed the mindvoice away with all her strength. At the soft, pained breath, she looked up through her fingers. “You can’t make me.”
Taisal laid her long hands on her lap, then adjusted the fall of her robe. Adepts wore the formal garment when journeying to or from the Cloisters, as well as for ceremony. The white fabric was thick with fine embroidery from shoulder to floor, its pleats a sign of rank and power. Not worn to impress her, Aryl knew. Her mother would act as Speaker tonight.
The Tikitik were coming.
“You can’t make me,” she repeated wearily, sitting back. Her own hands were restless, plucking at an imaginary splinter in the wood of the bench. As if any of the well-polished furnishings of the Sarcs would have splinters.
“Then open to me. Let me see what happened.”
“You know what happened. That device exploded. All the webbing ripped or fell apart or—” Her voice shattered. “I should have held on . . . been stronger . . . He shouldn’t have . . .”
A single tear sparkled on her mother’s pale cheek. Taisal turned her face rather than wipe it away. Light touched lines of fire from the chainnet that held her thick black hair; only metal could contain the willful locks of a powerful Chosen. Aryl’s hair, pale brown and fine, obeyed ordinary braided threads. Most of the time. At the thought, she poked an errant strand back in place and waited.