More than a few, he admitted to himself. Keeping to the boundary between ridge and valley floor meant interminable detours around barriers Enris glumly realized wouldn’t bother the Yena at all, from young Ziba to elderly Husni.
Fine for them. He took his extra steps, glad to confine his climbing to walking over screes of shattered rock, his leaps to long strides over the odd stream. When he had to wade, he did, his good solid boots—the one item from home he’d managed to keep intact—providing ample protection.
Home. Enris sighed, reaching involuntarily to find Tuana’s place in the world and his own. Against his will, he was farther from home than ever in his life. Now he was moving away from the one goal he’d set himself.
What was he doing here?
It wasn’t the Yena Chooser. He felt nothing for Seru Parth, beyond sympathy for her situation. When she released it, her Call was faint, like the smell of yesterday’s sweetpies. He barely heard it in his mind; he doubted it could summon any unChosen across this waste.
He stopped, his head turned toward Vyna. That’s where he belonged. That’s where he’d start finding answers. His fingers curled around the memory of a cylinder. An Oud had brought the strange device to his father’s shop, demanded their help to discover its secrets. Enris was convinced the device was neither Oud nor Tikitik. It fit his Om’ray hand perfectly; it responded to his mental touch, revealing a store of voices and images.
He’d understood none of them. He had no idea how the device worked. All he knew? It was Om’ray, despite being a technology as far beyond those he knew as the workings of the strangers’ flying machine.
The device was still in the shop, unless Jorg, his father, had returned it to the Oud. At the thought, Enris felt himself break into a sweat despite the coolness of the wind. The unrestrained power of the Oud was evident here as nowhere else he’d seen. They’d reshaped the road, or rather the tunnels beneath the road, as well as the lower half of this valley. If it hadn’t been deliberate, then it was without heed to anything above. The result was the same. What had set them off, he didn’t know or care.
He wanted Tuana safe. He had to believe it was. He couldn’t breathe if he thought the device, what he’d done, might have aroused the Oud against his Clan.
What was he doing here?
Aryl Sarc.
Enris crouched to bring a palmful of icy mountain water to his lips, then another, savoring the taste. He shook the last drops from his hand as he straightened. Surrounded by rock, soil, and stray clumps of withered grass, where the only sound was the wind and his steps, he wasn’t alone, not if he reached for her thoughts. He didn’t have her Talent to identify an Om’ray at a distance, but he did have the strength to contact a known mind, especially a welcoming one.
Did she appreciate her own Power?
Did she think he was here because of it?
Was he?
“What I need,” he said aloud, “is someone to talk to who isn’t scampering over the mountainside like a—”
Crack!
Enris accepted Haxel’s teasing about his feet—hadn’t he teased his Yena friend Yuhas? But, though big, he wasn’t clumsy by Tuana standards. He’d stepped on something that didn’t belong.
A piece of broken wood protruded from the pebbles, worth more than the handfuls of grass he’d been dutifully collecting for tonight’s camp. He bent to retrieve it, delighted when it took all his strength to wiggle it free. “Good size…” the words turned into a whistle of surprise.
Not a stick.
His hand fit perfectly around what had been a carved and finished staff, almost half his height. The wood was dark red and unfamiliar, its polish scratched and dulled by exposure and the rocks of its bed. Enris put it aside and dug for the rest of it.
Not a staff.
The remaining piece was a blade, long as his forearm and fitted to its bit of shaft so securely the wood had snapped under his foot, not that junction to metal. Enris grinned with triumph as he examined his treasure. “Aren’t you the beauty?” The Oud’s metal, right enough, but reworked by someone with skill and patience into a most unusual shape. The wide, thin blade, once razor sharp along both outer edges, ended in a forked tip. One portion of the tip was longer than its mate; not a break but made that way. Impractical for harvesting any crop he knew. Dangerous, that was certain.
Under the dirt, he discerned a line of ornamentation along the flat of the blade. A spit and hard rub revealed nothing so simple. A series of small, intricate symbols marched in a tidy row, some close together, some apart. Unique in design; not beautiful. He knew to a twinge in his shoulders the time and meticulous effort it took to inscribe metal. Why bother, if the result didn’t enhance the finished work?
Pride, perhaps. Hadn’t his father taught him to identify what he’d done? Not the everyday work, but those special pieces made after the routine blades and tools were finished, the adornments and art meant for Om’ray pleasure, not Oud—their creator should be known. Enris had chosen his favorite stars, hammering that tiny pattern discreetly into whatever was, to him, his best.
Nothing discreet about these symbols. He ran his thumb over them, achingly curious. Were they a metalworker’s personal mark? He’d show Aryl. She’d seen the symbols the Tikitik used to represent words and those of the strangers. If they weren’t the same…he felt a rush of hope. Could these represent words?
There were Om’ray who drew lists of names, crop yields, and such: Adepts, responsible for maintaining the Cloisters’ records. The skill to write and read was provided only to those who accepted that role for life, to be used exclusively within the Cloisters, for the concerns of the Clan as a whole.
Ordinary Om’ray had no need. Surely a metalworker, even if an Adept, wouldn’t abuse the knowledge simply to name his or her work.
More than pride. A message?
Enris shrugged off his pack and swung it to the ground. He went to one knee and untied his coat from the top. With a struggle—the pack already bulged in all directions—he managed to store the blade and its end of broken wood safely inside. The longer piece? He hefted it and grinned. No more wet boots.
As he reached for his coat, he spotted a pale speck among the disturbed pebbles by his foot. He brushed at it, hoping for more metal or wood, but it was only bone.
The bone itself didn’t trouble him. Tuana carried their dead to the end of the world—namely as far from their village, and any other Clan, as was comfortable to go—across the wide nost fields to where the flat land of the Oud gave way to low, rolling hills. Though he’d heard some Clans practiced burial, Tuana’s empty remains were sensibly left accessible to scavengers, present in abundance when the noisy clouds of delits returned to nest in their hillside burrows. Scattered Om’ray bones often greeted those bringing the latest to join them.
But no Om’ray would discard objects, or even wearable clothing, with their dead. This Om’ray must have died away from his Clan. There was only one kind who could. An unChosen on Passage.
A fellow fool.
A little digging unearthed more bones, most shattered or split. Enris was about to stop when he touched a softness among the fragments. It was a bag, its brittle material crumbling as he pulled it free.
Most of the contents fell apart as well, becoming flakes and fine powder, easily taken by the wind. He was left with two items. The first was a metal box the size of his smallest finger. He pressed its two longer sides together and a tiny, hot flame obediently bloomed from one end.
An ordinary firebox.
Enris pulled out his. The two were identical, save for the discoloration of age and dirt. Oud, as if he needed more proof the land between Grona and Rayna was theirs. He tucked both away.