PAIN!!!!
She was on the ground, writhing in the snow. Someone screamed.
NO!
She wasn’t a child anymore and they weren’t as powerful as Taisal. But they were two—and winning. Aryl tried to resist. She poured all she had into her shields, but layer upon layer shredded away.
She drew up her most horrifying memories to throw like knives: the osst being eaten alive in the Lake of Fire, the swarm, Yena burning…
FEAR!!! Her sense of Hoyon faded.
Oran kept coming.
Let her come. Aryl slipped into the M’hir, embraced its chaos…
And waited.
Oran followed, her presence tasting of triumph and greed…
…only to falter as she realized where they were.
Welcome to the M’hir.
Like a stitler springing its ambush, Aryl launched herself at her enemy. She didn’t know if she rode the M’hir Wind or was that wind…all she knew was RAGE.
She tore at Oran, tossing parts away, letting them go in the darkness…
AGONY…
She didn’t stop…stripping away more…and more…until what was left of Oran di Caraat sobbed and gibbered and flickered at the edge of existence.
Aryl?
Bern?
He flickered, too, tossed by storm and turmoil, desperately holding to what remained of his Chosen.
Aryl…
Her rage winked out, replaced by sick dread. What had she almost done?
She gathered Oran together and drew them both to safety.
Aryl spat snow, dirt, and bile from her mouth. She raised herself on arms she wouldn’t allow to shake, collected herself. In one smooth motion, she was on her feet, confronting her attackers, longknife out and ready in her hand.
Hoyon cowered against a window. Oran was on hands and knees in the snow and dirt, vomiting.
Not good.
Aryl put away the knife and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her stomach lurched, and she fought the urge to spew as well.
She hadn’t defended herself. She’d tried to kill Oran—and Bern.
Self-control was the first, most important lesson of all.
“You didn’t need to attack me,” she told them wearily. “Once I learn to control it, I’ll share the ability to move through the M’hir with anyone who wants it—starting with my Clan.” Hoyon gave her an incredulous look. Oran lifted her head, her hair flat and soiled, eyes shot with blood.
“You didn’t believe Bern, did you? Or want his new life, here.” Aryl stressed the word. “You decided to take what you wanted and go. To be greater than all of Grona’s other Adepts. You’d trade your healing Talent for it—your brother. But destroying me to take it was even better, wasn’t it? Then I couldn’t teach anyone else. It would be yours alone.”
Oran used a handful of snow to wash her face, then spat to one side. Her eyes never left Aryl’s. She didn’t answer.
She didn’t need to.
Aryl sighed. “You don’t see it, do you?” she said reluctantly, remembering a mug shattered on a floor. “Too much Power, held by too few, will destroy us. The Agreement keeps the peace not just between races, but between us, our Clans. You’re right. Moving through the M’hir could be the most valuable Talent of all. But if we dare change, if we throw this at the Oud and Tikitik, we threaten the balance that holds Cersi together. We’ll fall.” The world could end. She knew it, deep inside. She’d proved it. Hadn’t she almost killed another? “There’s only one way. Once this ability is safe, every Om’ray must have it. Including you.”
“Why?” Hoyon straightened. “After—Why would you do that?”
Because they were all Om’ray, a race disappearing from the world?
Because they were surrounded by those with more technology and real power than they could imagine, who didn’t care about them?
Because some good had to come from her mistake…from Costa’s death?
He’d had to ask, which meant he’d understand none of those answers.
“Twenty-two Om’ray are not enough to sustain and build a Clan,” Aryl told him instead, which was also the truth. “Sona needs you and your families. You’ve seen what we’ve accomplished in our first fist of days. Shelter, food, and now water. But it’s not enough.”
Oran sat, drawing her robe away from the soiled ground. “You Yena have no idea what it’s like here in the cold.” A peace offering?
“No, we don’t,” Aryl agreed. Not the time to mention the dreams. “We’re not ready for winter, let alone what will happen afterward. We could use what you know about living in the mountains, about growing food. We need your Talents and training. If you stay and help—when I’m ready, I’ll share what I can do with you as well as the others.”
“You tried to leave me there. Tried to kill me.” Oran’s hair came back to life, lashing the air around her head. “You expect me to trust anything you say?”
Aryl gazed at the Adept. This was no friend. The best she could hope for was the kind of truce that existed in the canopy, when two predators avoided each other during their hunts.
I expect you, she sent, just to Oran, through the M’hir that now so readily connected them, to be afraid of the dark.
Nothing troubled their return journey. It was much like their first, Aryl thought. The Grona Adepts hadn’t talked to her then either. They’d collected their coats—she both of hers—and the Adepts had tucked up their robes, however filthy. The rock hunters were piled closer to the line where shadow conquered light, a line moving steadily inward from both sides as the sun left the sky, but she didn’t bother to mention it. They were adults, after all, Chosen and powerful and Adepts.
If they were blind to danger, it suited her. They were blind to other things as well. Like the occasional glint from overhead, a reflection from what followed them, something cautious and discreet.
A comfort, to know a friend was watching. Aryl would have given anything to look up and smile at Marcus, but not even Grona were that blind.
They also didn’t see—or care to mention—the lines of compressed dirt here and there on the paving stones. She’d seen such paired tracks before. An Oud machine. It must have taken this road while they were at the Cloisters.
Since they hadn’t encountered it, the Oud traveled away from them, down the valley. Aryl kept them to the fastest pace Hoyon could manage, but the machine didn’t come in sight.
Stupid Oud. If it wanted to talk to the Sona Speaker, it should have waited here.
The only Om’ray who knew more about Oud were with her. Aryl chewed her lower lip a moment, then decided. “There’s an Oud ahead of us, “she informed them. “Going to the village.”
“Oud go where they will,” Hoyon said in a patronizing tone. “There’s no way to know where they—”
“What makes you say that?” Oran interrupted.
She’d learned there were things to fear. Aryl wasn’t proud to be the reason, but it was useful. “These tracks.” She pointed. “They go down the valley. There are no others. Plus…there’s this.” She pulled the pendant from its place under her tunic. “They promised to come and talk to me.”
Hoyon burst out laughing. “An unChosen?”
“I asked them to release water into the river,” Aryl said evenly. “We need it for the fields.”
He ducked his head deeper into his coat, for all the world like a offended flitter, but didn’t slow his pace.
“If this is to be an official Visitation,” Oran offered after a moment, “the Oud will ask for lists.”
“Lists. Of what?”
“Of everything.” Hoyon snorted. “Not that you have anything.”
“We have you,” Aryl countered. “Lists are records, are they not? Written down? That’s what you do.”