We’re not safe yet. Fierce and angry. Why are they attacking!?
Attacking? Enris looked past Worin’s head, aghast at what he saw. Buildings were tipping, sinking into the ground. Om’ray ran into the street, only to sink beneath its surface before they could scream. Wood snapped, brick crumpled, metal screamed. “The Oud—” This was Sona—
“They’re reshaping under everything!” his father shouted. “The village! The fields!”
“We should get the device—what the Oud left us—” Enris looked wildly for a way back down, not that there was any way to know where the cupboard had been. “Give it to them!”
“No. No.” Jorg shook him. “The Oud came for it the day you left. That’s not why they’re doing this. No one knows why. We have to run—” His hurried voice changed, became the gentlest, most terrible sound of all. “Ridersel…”
MOTHER! WHERE ARE YOU?!!! Worin struggled in his hold, frantic. MOTHER!!
Yuhas moved before Enris could think, catching Jorg before his now-limp body could fall off the roof. He brushed the older Chosen’s hair from his forehead, then looked up at Enris, his grim expression saying what Enris could already feel.
There was no mind there. Or life. Jorg had followed his Chosen.
There was, he realized numbly, no life anywhere but here. The sounds continued, but only of wood, brick, and metal. There were no more screams, no more sendings. Building after building was being consumed. Only the Cloisters still stood, bright and gleaming, while the ground slapped at its base and shattered its stair.
Worin gasped for breath.
What had the Adepts done to save Tuana?
Locked their doors.
“Come on,” Enris said, rising to his feet, swaying to balance. “We’re leaving.”
“And go where?” Yuhas had his arm around his Chosen; Caynen’s eyes were wide with fear, but she hadn’t panicked.
The grief would hit them all later, Enris thought.
“Take hold of me,” he told them. “Don’t let go.”
He didn’t allow himself to doubt, not when the roof shuddered, not when they were a heartbeat from death.
Where would be safe?
Nowhere at the mercy of Oud. Not Grona. Not—Sona.
The Yena he knew had been a burned remnant. He couldn’t trust that memory to be the same, couldn’t trust the Yena themselves to welcome him back.
Not Vyna.
Somewhere they stood a chance.
Enris closed his eyes, calmed his thoughts, and concentrated on the stranger camp. A ramp led to ancient buildings, uncovered from stone. Low white buildings, all the same. He kept building on the image, imagined it in daylight, remembered the smell of that air, the feel of the ground.
Then pushed…
…The M’hir remembered him, sang to him, tried to distract. He clung to the others, held them despite their fear—they were four, they must stay four—as strongly as he clung to the image of where they had to be…
…it wasn’t working. The M’hir tossed him aside, toyed with him. He lost sight, if sight was what he had, of the stranger camp. He tried to find another way out, strength bleeding from every pore, his sense of those in his care slipping away…
NO!
…There. Enris touched a path of less resistance, as if here the M’hir was tamer, more compliant. Desperate now, he followed…
…and felt the world against his feet again.
Worin was a dead weight in his arms. Yuhas, Caynen. They were all here…He shuddered with relief.
But where was here?
Dark. No. Not dark.
Glowing eyes looked back at him from every side, small and red. Some green. One winking blue. Enris gripped his knife, knew Yuhas was ready. Was it the swarm? Had he brought them from one death to another?
But it wasn’t truenight…
Suddenly, it was bright. He squinted. Something moved, and Yuhas pounced on it. The something squeaked in protest.
Then a familiar voice exclaimed, “Enris!” and Marcus Bowman beamed at him past the arm Yuhas had wrapped around his neck. “You can do it, too?”
Chapter 17
DANGER DANGER…DEATH!!!!
“NO!!!” Aryl heard the shout, realizing it was hers only after Naryn and Morla whirled to stare at her.
Horror filled their faces as they heard the sendings too. “Aryl—what—who?”
“Tuana.” Naryn gripped the table, pulled herself upright. “It’s Tuana!”
Carts. They’d been talking about Tuana’s carts. Ziba had just gone to find Stryn Licor, whose family built carts. While they’d waited with Morla. While she’d introduced Naryn to Oswa and little Yao. While they’d smiled shy smiles.
DANGER!! cracked that peace. Voices shouted, in the meeting hall, outside; inwardly, their own sendings of shock and apprehension reverberated mind-to-mind. The exiles, through this before, were quickest to react. A bleak undertone of fear began to spread.
Something had to be done. Tightening her shields, Aryl concentrated and plunged into the M’hir, driving into every mind nearby. PEACE! a command, with all her strength. You are safe. Sona is safe, more gently, but not letting any elude her. The sendings are from Tuana. Peace.
Even as she felt Sona’s fear subside, even as Oswa stared at her with tear-filled eyes, the drumbeats of DANGERDANGER ceased.
Oh, no. It couldn’t be.
The world shifted toward Sona. Her awareness of place, her existence relative to every other Om’ray, shifted with it.
Everyone cried out, staggered. Someone fell.
Only Yao sat still, unaffected. She steadied her mother.
Unable to credit her sense, Aryl reached for Tuana and found its glow of Om’ray all but gone. A few glimmers, clustered together, their combined pull no more than Yena’s. To her inner sense, Rayna was Cersi’s new center, bounded by Pana, Grona, and Sona to the sun’s rest, Amna and Pana to its rise. Vyna, as always, alone and beyond.
Naryn raised her head. Her eyes were huge and confused. “Where did we go? There were over six hundred of us.” Morla tried to make her sit; the other pulled away and stood straighter. “Where did we go?”
Into the ground that had tried to swallow her. That had drowned the Tikitik. That had destroyed Sona…
“We don’t know yet,” Aryl said aloud. It was easier to lie with words. “We need to get everyone together.” They were all running here, to be together. To be with her.
A grip on her arm. “Go,” Haxel ordered grimly. “Find any survivors. I’ll look after Sona.”
“I’ve never been there—”
“Find a way. Go!”
She was right. Aryl didn’t hesitate. She dove for her boots. Her hands knew what to do with them; her mind didn’t have room to wonder why she needed them.
Her hands broke a fastener. Enris. He would have felt this, no matter how far away—
“Enris.”
The bizarre echo stopped her cold. Had the others noticed?
“Aryl?” Yao leaned over to tug her coat. “Your pocket’s talking.”
So much for secrecy. Aryl pulled out the geoscanner, noticing almost in passing that its symbol was green—no Oud active nearby. Enris? Without thought she reached. Before she found Tuana, she found four Om’ray where none had been, where none should be. Near Sona’s Cloisters.
One, beyond doubt, Enris Mendolar.
With Marcus?
They hadn’t, she thought numbly, been there a moment ago. He’d learned to use the M’hir. But why go to the Human?