Yawning, Enris stretched his legs and arms, then shifted with a grunt to retrieve a sharp rock from where he sat. He tossed it into the darkness that walled their bit of light. “You sure you want to sleep out here?”
“We’re not going to sleep,” Aryl warned him, then temporized, “not until you’ve learned what I can teach you. If I can teach you.”
He shoved back his hood, as if too warm. Aryl sat as close as she could to the flames and left her head well wrapped. “I’ll have you know my father considers me a quick study.”
Her father had died when she was young. Her mother had somehow recovered and grown strong…Aryl pushed away thoughts of Taisal di Sarc. Her mother could touch the other. Not attention she wanted to court.
“Think about when I moved us from the strangers’ camp on the mountain to Yena. Did you sense the other?”
“‘Other?’ Someone else? No.”
“A place. A moving darkness.” That wasn’t the word she wanted. Taisal called it the Dark, but it wasn’t. Aryl raised her eyes from the fire and stared into the real thing: nothing, black, an absence of light. Even peaceful, without hunters. The other place wasn’t like that. Its darkness was ablaze with sensation, churning with powerful, chaotic movement that affected everything in its path. Like the M’hir Wind when it struck the canopy—a force to be understood and resisted, or it would destroy.
“Call it the M’hir,” she decided. The naming gave her comfort, as if it brought the inner darkness into the light of day, harnessed it for her people’s good. Her fiches were designed to ride one wind—maybe Om’ray were, too.
“The M’hir, is it?” Then he startled her by adding matter-of-factly, “Guess that’s where I pushed the roof this morning. I was afraid it would land on someone outside. Good to know it’s really gone. It is really gone, isn’t it?”
Aryl blinked. “Roof?”
“What was left of the supports. About to collapse on us.” Enris paused and his voice took on an edge. “Impressed Gijs.” He’d relaxed his shields. Now she felt anger and a curious shame. “Too much.”
That reaction, she understood. And something else. “You thought I was Gijs, didn’t you? That he’d followed you to demand you teach him.”
His lips quirked as he gestured apology. “Don’t ask me why. Gijs has young Fon now. I wonder who’ll be the next surprise? Oh, yes. You.” This with a sly glance. “Wish I could be here to see their faces. Haxel’s in particular.”
Insufferable Tuana. Aryl refused to react. She’d tell the others about the M’hir when she chose and not a moment sooner. “Are you ready to learn this or not?”
“If you won’t let me sleep—” a dramatic sigh, “—I’m ready. Do your worst, Aryl Sarc.”
If he could use the darkness—the M’hir, she reminded herself—this might be easy.
Or not.
She’d promised to try. “There’s more you should know about the M’hir before you touch it. It—it hungers. It will take you into itself, make you forget who you are. The Lost. Somehow they are part of it, or it’s part of them. I felt it.”
“Dangerous. What else?”
“This is no joke, Enris!” Aryl felt her cheeks warm. “The longer you touch it—the closer you let it come to who you are—the easier it is to let go. It came in my sleep last night, and I—” She stopped there. “It’s more than dangerous.”
Instant concern, deep and real, proved he wasn’t taking this as lightly as she’d feared. “Aryl, you don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.” Aryl laid another splinter on the fire, just so. “Don’t be careless. That’s all. Don’t look at the scenery. Treat the M’hir like fire. A tool that can burn you.”
“So how does this tool work?” Enris picked up a pebble, shot through with sparkles. “How do I move this from here,” on the flat of his right hand, “to here?” a quick toss to his left.
“You need me for that?”
Enris grinned. The pebble lifted from his palm, moved through the air between them, and landed with a quiet click among the others in front of her boot. Aryl barely sensed the Power he expended. “But that’s not what you do,” he pointed out. “Not how you brought us faster than a heartbeat to Yena.”
“No.” Nor was what he did something she could do, Aryl thought wistfully. Her mother could push with her mind, like Enris. So far, she hadn’t found that useful Talent in herself. “To move us—” or to move Bern Teerac, that fateful Harvest, “—was what I wanted most at that moment. I wanted us in my home, helping my Clan. I pictured us already there, until that image was more real to me than being on the cliff with the Humans. And there we were.”
She’d wanted Bern safe on the bridge, not falling to his death, wanted that to be real more than anything in her life. Bern, but she hadn’t thought of Costa, or the others who’d fallen…screaming…
Aryl forced the memory away. “Somehow,” she explained as best she could, “it means going into the M’hir, then out of it almost at once. It’s as if the M’hir is a place, but one where distance doesn’t matter, only will, so it lets a traveler ignore distance, too.” She threw up her hands. “Which probably makes as much sense to you as it does to me.”
Enris’ eyes almost glowed. “An image of your destination. Perhaps it’s necessary to have been there in person. To know the place well.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You said it: first, you envisioned a place you wanted to be. Then, you used your strength of will—which I’m guessing means your considerable Power—to move there through the M’hir. If you didn’t have a strong, clear location in mind, a target for your will, maybe you wouldn’t go anywhere.” He chuckled. “Or maybe you’d vanish like my roof. Go in, but not come out. Wonder what that’s like.”
She glowered at him. “Not funny, Tuana.”
No smile now. “I think it’s important to consider what could go wrong.”
Maddening unChosen. Bad as her brother for being ridiculous one moment, serious the next, without bothering to let her know which to expect. Enris returned her look with one of complete innocence.
Aryl pressed her lips together. He was right. She knew almost nothing about traveling through the M’hir, nothing of the risks. How could she teach anyone else until she’d learned herself?
“We’ll start with sending.” Before he could object, she went on quickly: “Yes, you can send mind-to-mind an impressive distance. But even you have limits.” Her glare defied him to argue. Enris merely smiled. “The M’hir can carry your thoughts like the wind, to anyone else able to touch it. I’ve found no limit, no effort except to keep from being swept away. Interested?”
“Very.” He held out his right hand, palm up, the gesture natural, as between trusted friends. Offering touch.
He meant nothing more by it. After all, who better than an eligible unChosen to know she wasn’t a Chooser?
Yet.
If not now, it didn’t matter when. It would be too late. Enris would be gone.
Within a fold of her long coat, Aryl’s right hand curled into a fist, nails digging into her skin.
“Close your eyes,” she ordered, proud the words sounded normal. She laid her left hand on his. Different calluses marked his palm; his hand was wider and longer than hers. Warmer. The irony that someone so physically strong should possess the Talent to move what he wanted by Power didn’t escape her.
But not everything required force.