Aryl agreed the symbols were words. Not a name—or not just a name. Enris puzzled at it as he walked. A list, like Tuana’s Speaker prepared for the Oud’s Visitations? He couldn’t imagine one kept on a tool. Something important to be remembered? That didn’t make sense either. What Om’ray needed to know was shared mind-to-mind: parent to child, between Chosen, to some extent among those doing the same work. No one Om’ray could know everything. He didn’t know how to operate an Oud harvester in a field; Traud didn’t know how to pour metal into a mold, let alone properly sharpen the machine’s blades.
Everyone knew what was dangerous, and who belonged.
Daily happenings and advice were part of ordinary conversation. Strangers newly Chosen might share recent events from their Clan, if approved by the Adepts, and Council made announcements of import in front of all.
Or so he’d believed. What did his Clan know of his Passage? He’d entered the Cloisters unconscious; once recovered, he’d been told to leave in the dark, alone. Mauro Lorimar and his followers had known enough to lay ambush, to send him on his way bloody. How? Yuhas sud S’udlaat, once Parth and Yena, had been the only well-wisher, saving him from a worse beating. Had Yuhas told his family the decision of Council?
Had his grandmother, Councillor Dama Mendolar, known the truth about the Adepts’ reasons, as Aryl claimed?
Ridersel’s relationship with her mother was strained at best. That would end it.
The past…Enris rubbed the dull edge thoughtfully. The Eldest told their stories—most, including his grandmother’s, laced with warnings about proper behavior for unChosen—about Om’ray they had known. To hear them was to believe nothing ever changed, including the foolish risk-taking of young Om’ray. Only Adepts collected everything there was to know, to be recorded so only they could read it.
Why?
A new question. A radical one. The sort Aryl would ask.
Enris pondered it as he tucked the blade inside his coat and took a carefully small sip from the sac, leaving the water in his mouth as long as possible. Adepts were the gifted, most powerful Om’ray. They received training to enhance their inner abilities, abilities to be used for the benefit of their Clan. He could have joined their ranks, had he not preferred the work of his hands over his mind. And preferred being able to wander the fields instead of work at all, should the mood strike him.
If he’d become an Adept, would they have let him stay?
Enris shrugged. More to the point, as an Adept, would he have known about Sona? The death of an entire Clan should have been felt by all Om’ray alive at that time. Wouldn’t such an event be recorded?
Unless each new generation of Adepts merely recorded their own time, without reading what had passed before.
He would, if he had the chance. Enris added reading to his own list, the one of questions he hoped Vyna would answer, and problems they would solve.
Once he got there.
Enris didn’t begrudge the lack of sleep last truenight. He’d never forget a moment: how firelight burnished Aryl’s hair, the quickness of her thoughts, her warm slow smiles. He might not want to remember the trauma of his encounter within the M’hir, but that memory was also of her courage and Power. Her insights. It was the leave-taking he would have wanted from his family.
But—a yawn cracked his jaw—he was paying for it.
The sun had melted into its mold beyond Grona, to cool overnight so it would be ready to rise over Pana tomorrow. Worin had earnestly presented this explanation at the supper table, after his first time operating the vat controls. Enris grinned, wincing as his chapped lower lip split again.
All he could see was the dirt within the splash of brightness ahead of his boot. And his boot. And sometimes the cold puffs of his breath. He’d shortened the twist of rope inside the Sona light, hoping to conserve its oil. Walking—if the ground was cooperatively flat—was one thing he could do half asleep. If he was half awake and not dreaming he was walking while really he was asleep…
“’Nuff of that,” the Tuana said aloud, raising the light. He’d tried securing it to his belt, but if tipped to one side, it went out. Running low on oil, he suspected.
Something caught his eye. He took an eager step forward, swinging the light from side to side trying to find it again.
There, right in front. He would have walked into it in another step or two. “Finally!”
Not much as rocks went: roundish, gray, and plain. Barely up to his waist, with a flat top. But it was the first object larger than his fist he’d seen since leaving Sona and the first hint he was close to the other side of the valley. Enris dropped his pack on the rock with a relieved groan.
There would be more nearby, big and small ones, with streams trickling between them. Lovely wet streams.
Light in hand, he walked outward in a series of arcs, glancing back every few steps to be sure he stayed in sight of his rock. Nothing but flat dirt. He widened his search in disbelief. Nothing.
Surr-PLUNK! Clatterclatter.
Enris halted. When there was no other sound, he turned, slowly, and brought his light high over his head.
His pack was lying on the ground. The clatter had been his sticks.
Odd.
He might be bone-tired, but he knew he’d put the pack securely on the rock’s flat top. Grumbling, he walked over to his pack and picked up the sticks. He put his light on the rock.
Where it tilted and guttered.
And went out.
Because the rock was no longer flat.
Abandoning the light and sticks, Enris scooped up his pack and broke into a run, trusting his memory of the ground he’d walked, using his sense of place to guide him in the pitch-darkness.
After a few hasty strides, he slowed, then stopped. What was he doing? So his pack slid off a rock. So he’d put his light down on some unseen bump. It was a rock, not a table. Not a hunter. He wasn’t a frantic Yena. Truenight was safe.
Still.
Holding his breath, feeling the fool, Enris listened for anything louder than the pulse of blood in his ears.
Surrrrr-tinkle CRUNCH!
Like that: the sound of the small metal light being crushed by something heavy. Something alive.
This time, when he started running, Enris didn’t plan to stop any time soon.
A shame there was a ditch directly ahead.
His foot caught and he flew forward with the momentum of his last stride, unable to drop the pack fast enough to bring his hands up to break the fall.
He’d never live this down, Enris thought with remarkable calm before the ground and truenight claimed him.
Chapter 7
ARYL YAWNED. CATCHING HER aunt’s frown, she said as contritely as possible, given she hadn’t been paying the slightest attention, “I’m listening.”
“Then what did I say?” Before Aryl could reply to that, Myris went on, exasperation beneath every word. “I said Enris shouldn’t have left us. I don’t care whose Call he heard. And you shouldn’t have followed him, Aryl. Outside in truenight?” A shudder. “You could have been eaten!”
“By what?” Aryl asked innocently.
Myris hesitated. She remained pale, the gash above her eye angry and swollen, and her hands trembled. That hadn’t stopped her from intercepting Aryl on the road to Sona and escorting her back—as she put it—to safety. She drew a quick breath before resuming her argument. “The point is that you used poor judgment. As First Chosen, I’m responsible—”
“‘First Chosen?’” Aryl stopped in her tracks. Those exiles near enough to overhear made a show of being very busy at their tasks. Her mother, Taisal, was the First Chosen of the House of Sarc. Myris had left the Sarc home to seek her own place, as was proper.