Bad rock, Aryl managed to reply, careful to add overtones of rueful amusement as she settled back down. She pretended to fidget and forced a smile in case Myris could see her face. My bones need more padding.
Her aunt couldn’t afford to use her Talent until she healed, not that Aryl would have a choice if Myris detected turmoil. She had to trust her shields, being unable to move out of contact without disturbing Veca, close behind her.
A pillow would be nice. A flash of pain, quickly hidden. Ael groaned in Joined empathy but didn’t wake.
Aryl cupped her hand against her aunt’s soft cheek. Too warm. Rest, she sent, along with a careful sharing of her own strength, and felt more than heard Myris sigh in relief.
She waited until sure her aunt slept. Longer.
Then she lay back, eyes open, to wait for daylight.
When all darkness would be gone.
Despite breath-fogging cold at firstlight, no one lingered in their shelter. Their still-warm bedding went to the injured, while Ael and Weth rebuilt the fire. There was no question of leaving today. Myris was feverish and too quiet. Chaun had roused to open his eyes and smile, nothing more. Husni chided her daughter’s Chosen for lying around while others worked, but when she turned away, her face showed every Harvest. They all shared the involuntary waves of agony when he moved; only Weth could persuade him to swallow. He was worse.
Sona was worse by the light of day, too. They used the name, though no one could give good reason beyond a wary look toward Seru Parth. In turn, she remained obstinately herself and refused to talk about what she called “yesterday’s weather.” That weather had blown itself over the mountain ridge and away, its clouds a tatter of wisps in the sky, its snow and rain little more than dark stains. In this valley, stone shed water or dirt sucked it down. As well, they’d collected what they could before truenight, Aryl thought, licking always-dry lips.
A long night indeed. She hadn’t slept again for fear of dreams—in revenge, her mind might have been a wing on the M’hir for all the control she’d had over the direction of her thoughts. Seru. Ziba. The darkness. Bern and his Chosen. Myris. This place—its past. Her mother. Yena. The strangers. The headdress and bones. Tomorrow.
Enris.
No more of him, Aryl vowed, tightening her belt to silence her empty stomach. With daylight had come common sense, or its kin, pragmatism. The Tuana was a stranger, on Passage. Their paths had crossed, to the exiles’ benefit. If he felt the need to continue his journey alone, it was his right and obligation. However long he remained, they’d take advantage of his strength and knowledge.
If she could avoid him this morning, all the better.
The exiles divided into groups to search for their most pressing need: food. Aryl had hoped to go with Seru, to talk to her cousin. Haxel and Cetto claimed her first.
“Reminds me of the nekis that fell one M’hir,” Haxel said finally. “Took a good portion of Parth grove with it. Remember, Cetto?”
The former Yena Councillor stood with one hand shading his eyes, though the rising sun—and Amna—was behind them. “Wasn’t this bad.”
The three of them were atop the highest beam roofing last night’s shelter, its wide surface secure, if tilted. It provided a useful viewpoint. Aryl found its height a comfort. She pursed her lips and surveyed their surroundings once more, this time looking for detail rather than absorbing the shock.
The valley narrowed here to perhaps an easy half-day’s walk from one formidable cliff wall to the other. It drew tighter still not far ahead, where another twist hid what might be its beginning.
Two lines scored the valley floor. One, the dry riverbed, its pattern of tumbled stone hinting at the force which had once scoured its width; the other, matched to the river’s course though set high above its bank, what had been a roadway of pale, cut stone, now fragmented and heaved. Aryl’s gaze followed the ruined road and empty river to where they disappeared from sight around the valley’s bend. Where did they go?
As for where they were…the road cut through what had clearly been a village, between this side of the river and the cliff, from its extent, more populous than Yena had ever been. The violence from beneath that furrowed and tossed the ground of the valley mouth hadn’t so easily erased Sona itself. The buildings, though small, had been sturdy. From what she could see from this vantage point, most had been attached to one another by low stone walls and rooftop beams, providing extra strength.
Not unscathed, however. Most of those beams had come free of their supports, to lie like tossed sticks. Some of the stone walls had crumbled; others stood seemingly straight and untouched but spanned dark pits where the ground had been eaten away from below.
Homes, she guessed. Om’ray homes—another guess—of a style unknown to the exiles. Each opened to a narrow roadway off the main one; each shared walled open space with their neighbors, now choked with dead vegetation. Aryl watched Syb and Taen try to force their way through one such space. They soon gave up and rejoined the rest, searching what homes remained accessible.
“Can we be sure this was once Om’ray?” Cetto rumbled. “There’s no Cloisters.”
“Here,” Haxel pointed out.
She was right, Aryl agreed. Though Grona’s Cloisters sat near their homes, Yena’s was a good distance from their village—why, no one knew or wondered. “That could have been their meeting hall.” The First Scout indicated a mound of shattered wood across the main road, half buried in soil and stone. A large building, set to overlook the river. If these had been Om’ray, it would have hosted every gathering of importance, as well as those for the joy of being together.
Aryl shuddered. Then her attention was caught by a gleam across the river. The rising sun had reached an area filled with white straight stalks—stalks with, she squinted to see, familiar branched tops. Many were toppled, most leaned in disarray, but she knew what she saw. “Nekis!” She hadn’t been completely wrong.
“We looked.” Haxel made a gesture of disgust. “Dead, like the rest of this place.”
“How?” Aryl stared at the plants. She could understand those broken or buried failing to survive, but these were the canopy’s most common growth. Nothing stopped young nekis surging from the ground, or regrowing in their multitudes from a fallen parent.
“In the groves, their feet are in the Lay Swamp,” Cetto suggested, his low voice somber. “Perhaps when the river failed, these did, too.”
Could strong, towering nekis—though none of these had been tall—be killed so easily? Aryl found the parched grove more a blow than the village. She’d thought of the groves and canopy as permanent fixtures of the world. Her home. At best, the swamp beneath them had been a nuisance, a threat to the careless. A new notion, that its black and dangerous water had been necessary to the growth above.
“Firewood.” With that practical dismissal, Haxel directed their attention closer to hand. “There’s something I don’t understand. Those lines—they go under the buildings. See?”
Obviously something other than the crumbling walls or roadways. Puzzled, Aryl followed the scout’s impatient finger as it indicated where they stood, the remains of the next building, then jabbed over to one closer to the other end of the village. At first, she saw nothing but the confusion of debris and time.
Then, she saw it. Haxel’s “lines” weren’t walls, but narrow depressions. They bounded the village, a course of small, similar stones. Once she recognized them, she saw they ran everywhere. If they’d been connected before the destruction, they would have formed an intricate network of shallow ditches. Some went beneath each home, reappearing on the other side.
Aryl’s eyes flashed to the dry riverbed. She laughed, overjoyed by the simple elegance of it.