Though it was wood.
Huge splintered beams—some heaved upright and tangled, like sticks tossed by a child and let fall, others protruding from mounds—bordered this road. For road it was. Making this a place—a built place—before its destruction. Home to the forgotten Chosen whose headdress pressed against her skin.
Sona.
Only one word, but sent with a certainty she shared. Enris was right. This had been the home of a Clan. But what did it mean? What had happened? Were they safe or now in danger from more than the storm?
There, with the last group of exiles, came the only Om’ray who might have answers. How Seru Parth knew anything about this dead place, Aryl couldn’t imagine, but she no longer doubted. She took a step to intercept her cousin, then hesitated.
Seru was chatting happily to Ziba, pointing ahead to the welcome light, laughing as if they’d been out for an afternoon’s visit instead of a march across ice and rock.
As if she’d never left her body empty on the road.
“Come,” Enris said softly. “Answers can wait for a roof.”
Haxel had indeed found them a roof: the remains of a building with a few roof beams askew overhead. Stone and black wood rose as walls to shoulder height on three sides, barring the cold fingers of wind. The First Scout and the others had moved loose rubble to clear a flat, if not level, area within, in so doing discovering the remains of a stone hearth. It held a crackling fire for the first time in—none of them bothered to speculate how long this place had been a ruin. Om’ray lived in the known and the now; for the first time, Aryl understood the comfort that could give. A shame she couldn’t bring herself to feel it.
Their carefully gathered twists of dry grass were put aside for the future; there were abundant splinters of dark, wide-grained wood to burn. Splinters. As if the split and shattered remains of beams and floorboards were anything so harmless. Those still framing the door and inner walls were deeply inset with carvings, images of growing things twined around complex, unfamiliar symbols. They’d had meaning, once. The others ignored them, after commenting on the quality of work. Such always outlived its maker. They were comforted by that, too.
Aryl leaned in a shadow against the tallest portion of surviving wall and tried not to frown.
The rest of Yena’s exiles sat shoulder to shoulder, chapped faces rosy in the light of the flames. Some opened their coats to coax what warmth the fire offered; others snuggled together under blankets. Close quarters for twenty-three, but no one complained. They were together.
Packs hung from the straightest beam to keep them out of the way. That, and because Husni fussed about crawlers spoiling what food remained. Despite seeing no other life for days, canopy habits persisted. Their assortment of mismatched pots, packed with snow, nestled near glowing coals. A trick from Grona. Before their arrival, Syb and Weth had made a soup from the bread they’d carried, letting it simmer and thicken while they’d waited for the rest of the Om’ray. The result had no taste but, Aryl decided, fishing the inevitable gritty bit from between her teeth, the hot moist stuff might have been fresh dresel by the speed with which the first offering disappeared. Their largest pot was stewing a second batch—Myris had volunteered her entire packet.
Their elders smiled wearily at one another. Ziba was snugged under Seru’s arm, both with their eyes more closed than open.
She wouldn’t disturb this hard-won peace, Aryl decided. Plenty of time to talk to her cousin in the morning.
At the thought of spending the night, she wrinkled her nose. The place reeked of wet boots and burning wood. The air glittered, firelight caught by the fine, acrid dust they’d kicked up on arriving, yet to settle. Shelter, indeed. How quickly she’d grown used to sleeping outside. She resolved to be grateful—and look for better tomorrow.
Enris propped himself against the wall beside her. He shoved a lock of dusty black hair from his forehead, leaving a streak. His eyes, bright and dark, surveyed the room. “Yena don’t build like this,” he stated. “Not from what I saw in the canopy.”
So she wasn’t the only one restless. “The Tikitik built our village,” Aryl explained, pitching her voice to his ears. “Yena Om’ray—” she paused to choose her words, “—made homes.”
The Cloisters held records: names and Joinings, births and deaths—collected and understood by Adepts. All ordinary Yena knew of their past was the echo of those gone before held in the beautiful cunning of their woodcraft: cupboards and furnishings, forgotten hiding places, sturdy bridgework. Homes where Om’ray feet polished floors to gleaming, themselves works of art. Homes entrusted to the First Chosen of each generation, to be lovingly maintained for the next.
Homes. Ashes falling like black snowdrops into the Lay Swamp, scorched remains abandoned in the canopy to be overgrown by vines and thickles. To rot and be erased.
Stone was better. Aryl pressed her shoulder blades against the wall for comfort. Stone, or beams like these, she thought, following a dark line with her eye. They must have been made from entire, full grown stalks, cut to lie flat atop one another or fit end on end. Too heavy for a Yena home, carried high on the living fronds of a rastis, but their thickness promised endurance and protection from the cold.
“You’re right, though,” she mused. “This doesn’t look like their work.” The Tikitik coaxed living stalks to their bidding. She’d seen it for herself. Yena homes owed their structure to assembled pieces already in their final, useful shape, ready for gauze-on-frame windows and dresel pod roofs. These beams? Their initial shaping bore tool marks like those Yena woodworkers left on the planks they trimmed to replace wear on bridges or ladders. “Do you see the carving? That’s not Tikitik.”
Enris made a pleased sound. “No? Then I’ve something else to show you—tomorrow, when we’ve decent light.”
“Tomorrow,” she agreed, trying not to yawn. She ran her hand along the stone. “Is this at all like Tuana? Oud work?”
“Oud dig holes,” he snapped, as if insulted. “Tuana Om’ray build for ourselves. But not—” said more thoughtfully, “—not like this. We’d never waste wood on supports. It doesn’t grow on the plains. All we have comes from the Oud—scraps from disused tunnels.”
Aryl wrinkled her nose again. These dry lifeless mountains were bad enough. If there were no nekis or rastis, she didn’t care for Tuana’s plains either. Not that her preference mattered. “Where do the Oud get it?”
“No one knows.” With a “who cares?” shrug.
So Tuana shared Yena’s lack of curiosity about the not-real beings who lived on Cersi. She shouldn’t be surprised; it was an Om’ray trait. One they couldn’t afford, she fumed to herself. The exiles had to learn everything they could to survive.
“The Oud know,” she challenged. “We should.”
“I never wondered before,” he admitted. “Maybe they trade with your Tikitik for pieces.”
Tired as she was, Aryl straightened to stare up at Enris. “Oud and Tikitik?” He might have redrawn the world. “Together?”
That wide grin. “Hardly together. Trade’s one thing. Getting along’s another. From all I’ve heard, they like each other even less than they like us. Without the Agreement, who knows which of them we’d still have?”
“How do you know we’d still be here?”
Enris gave her a very strange look. “We are the world.” As if she’d somehow forgotten who and what she was.
“Are we?” Aryl murmured. When he would have protested, she gestured apology, her hand heavy. “We’re all tired,” she said. “We’ve a place to sleep. Be glad of that.”
“After going how far the wrong way?” A grumble like the storm outside. Fingers brushed the back of her hand. Oud re-shaped this place once. Enris held back something more. She sensed its troubled edge.