A familiar circle. Her fingers trembled as she brushed dirt from its inner curve.
There. A small square. Inside, six tiny dots. His stars. His name.
Aryl slipped her hand through, pushing the band up her wrist until it was covered by her sleeve. The chill of the metal warmed to her skin. Enris had made this. He’d shown her the memory.
She could guess how the Oud came to have it. An Oud—possibly the same one—had stolen the Tuana’s token and pack, before dragging him for days through their tunnels. But why bring this to her? Why now? There was a message in both timing and gift.
Aryl tasted change, bitter and ominous.
Something was coming.
Despite what she’d said to Haxel, the Oud hadn’t meant this tunnel.
Whatever it was took its time. Their second fist passed, marked by clear skies and bitter cold. Hoyon professed this to be more typical weather. The exiles took full advantage, working outside from firstlight to truenight, using large fires to stretch the day. The Grona might be unused to heavy work, but even they seemed swept up by the enthusiasm to rebuild Sona. It helped that each new structure meant more space and privacy.
Hoyon preferred to work with Gijs sud Vendan, who seemed flattered by the older Chosen’s attention. Juo was not, and continued to avoid both Adepts. Oran and her Chosen took their ease—when they had it—with Chaun and Weth. Kran, not yet accepted by the Sona unChosen, hovered near his sister.
When he wasn’t, Aryl thought uneasily, staring at her.
On the surface, Sona was a unit, working to the betterment of all.
But the Adepts would stop talking when she walked by, and neither volunteered a word to her. Bern barely spoke at all, perhaps because Oran made a point of sleeping with others—to the blunt-spoken dismay of his great-grandmother. Husni, in no uncertain terms, expected babies. Sona needed them. What was Oran thinking?
Oran, Aryl knew, was thinking about being a proper Adept in a real Cloisters, trained and valued. She’d do nothing, yet, to risk her chance of a return to that life.
Nervous, quiet Oswa, little Yao her shadow, went from useless at cooking to useless at mending. Taen, normally the most patient of Om’ray, declared the older Chosen an inept menace following a too-close call pouring hot oil.
There was, however, something Oswa did very well. Aryl discovered it when she entered the meeting hall looking for Veca. The woodworker wasn’t there, but the Grona sat at one end of a long table—the hall now boasted two—Yao beside her paying rapt attention to what her mother’s hands were doing.
Oswa was writing.
She used a splinter and a liquid from a small pot to draw symbols on a length of white fabric. A child’s undercoat, Aryl realized.
“This is me?” Yao asked, pointing at a double curve.
“This,” Oswa replied, touching the ink-free end of the splinter to a series of circles and lines. “See? There is the road. The river. This is where you mustn’t go. This is the way—Aryl. I didn’t hear you.” She laid her hands flat on her work, not to hide it, but hold it, as if she thought it would be taken away.
Perhaps it would, in Grona. Oswa was no Adept. If she knew how to read and write, it was knowledge gleaned through her Joining to Hoyon. Also Forbidden.
This wasn’t Grona. “May I see?” Aryl asked. A way to represent the world that didn’t rely on their inner sense? She’d never heard of such a thing, but she wasn’t the one with a crippled daughter.
Yao climbed into her lap when she sat beside Oswa, snuggling into place with a contented sigh. Aryl put her arms around her, feeling the mother’s shields. “It’s Sona,” the child said proudly. She was a warm little thing, happiest when touching others. The exiles believed it made her feel less alone; even Haxel would put aside her work to ruffle Yao’s fluff of brown hair and smile.
Aryl, who knew Yao could sense them all through the M’hir, thought it just the child’s sweet nature, blossoming under the exiles’ attention.
Young as she was, Yao knew better than to climb in her father’s lap or touch any of the Caraats. Hoyon and the rest treated her as if she was not-real, at best uncomfortable when she was near. Aryl had to believe he’d been willing to risk his daughter’s life to reach Sona because he hadn’t felt there was a life to risk.
If he or Oran knew Yao existed partly in what Yena’s Adepts called the Dark, it would be worse.
Aryl pressed her cheek to Yao’s head. “How does it work?”
“I can’t bear her to be lost again,” Oswa said defensively, her hair lashing. “I can’t.”
None of us could, Aryl sent, putting commitment beneath the words. “Show me. I’m truly interested, Oswa,” she persisted at the other’s look of doubt.
The Chosen spread the undercoat. “This is here.” A symbol like two sticks braced against one another. Her finger went to one side of the ’coat, indicated a line from which three others rose. “This is where we see the sun in the morning.” To the other side, a line alone. “This is where it sets. The empty river.” Two wavy lines. “The mounds.” Dots of black.
Sona. Defined not by the Clans around it, but by its relationship to other places. Aryl’s eyes shot up to Oswa’s. “Remarkable.”
“I wrote her name—she knows it—here, with mine. So we’re together.” A line of symbols beneath. Painstaking, detailed work. The Grona sighed. “Foolish, I know.”
“It’s clever,” Aryl said sincerely. “Like looking down from the sky.” Was this how Marcus saw his surroundings? Was this how he found his way from place to place—world to world? She felt dizzy trying to imagine it. “Would you teach me?”
“Why?”
Freeing one arm from Yao, now half asleep, Aryl touched the mark that was Sona, then drew her finger across the empty white and pressed where she thought would be the waterfall and Cloisters. “Yao will go here, one day. She’ll need to know the way. I’d like to draw it for her.”
“She can’t go out on her own,” Oswa objected, reaching for her daughter. Unconcerned—or familiar—with the talk of adults, Yao stirred only to settle in her mother’s lap, promptly closing her eyes. “She never will,” the Grona continued. “You know she’s—” a whisper, “—she’s not like other Om’ray. The world isn’t there to her.”
Aryl regarded the now-sleeping child. Before meeting Marcus, she would have shared her mother’s grief. Now, she found herself smiling. “The world is there—and more than the world, Oswa. Yao may be the first Om’ray able to walk beyond the end of the world, to see what’s there.”
“Om’ray are the world,” as if Aryl was the child. “There’s nothing more.”
She didn’t argue. “So, how should I draw a mountain?”
A tenth later—and Aryl’s attempts at drawing the valley—Oswa relaxed enough to laugh. She had a lovely smile, belied by the lines on her face. With Yao asleep, the burden on her Power lessened, though she continued to shield against any dreams. Sleeping children didn’t confine themselves to their own minds.
Dreams. Maybe, Aryl thought, it was time. She put down her splinter and wiped her fingertips on a scrap. “Has Yao had any unusual dreams, Oswa? I don’t want to concern you, but Seru, Ziba, and I—” she decided not to mention Juo’s unborn “—we’ve each had one or more since coming to Sona. Dreams about what this place was like. That’s how we found the supplies hidden in the mounds.”
The Grona didn’t look surprised, though her cheeks paled and she held Yao a little tighter. “Teaching dreams.”
Aryl blinked. “You know what they are?”
“Adepts use them. That’s how they learn.” A flash of bitterness, quickly stilled. “Memories are stored in the Cloisters, I don’t know how. But certain skills and knowledge—whatever must be known by those who come after—those are kept. To learn from them, an Adept dreams.”