What to do? She had to do something . . . what? She didn’t know how to help an Om’ray with such hurts.
How could she help a Human?
Aryl. Her name; his grief. Stop. There’s nothing we can do.
Enris was right. She knew it, though it was agony to be helpless. She tightened her shields and opened her eyes.
Marcus’ eyes were still closed. He trusted her. Had he believed she could help?
All she’d done was learn she couldn’t, Aryl told herself bitterly. “Marcus—”
He opened his eyes, appeared dazed, but before she could say anything else, a small figure appeared. Yao flung herself on top of the Human and whirled to face her, teeth bared. DON’THURTHIMDON’THURTHIM!!!!
Aryl wasn’t the only one to flinch from the raw Power of that sending.
“We didn’t hurt him—” Enris began.
LEAVEHIMALONE!!
Marcus eased his tiny protector to the side, where she crouched like a quivering stitler about to launch. “Aryl would never . . . hurt me, Yao,” he soothed. “No . . . one here would . . . hurt me.”
Unimpressed by words, Yao continued to glare at Aryl. I won’t let them. Quieter, more polite, but with no less determination.
She should have expected this. Yao was the only one of them who wouldn’t see a not-Om’ray lying here. All she saw was the truth: here was someone kind, like a father, who suffered. Aryl nodded to herself, then consciously thought of Marcus, of her feelings for him, and shared them with the child.
“Oh.” Yao’s eyes opened wide and she settled back. “You’re his friend, too.” She grinned, as content as she’d been furious an instant before. Her tiny hand found the Human’s. “Have you tried Comspeak yet? I’m very good at it.”
“You are.” Marcus smiled happily at the child, then looked at Aryl. “Aryl, too? Good! Aryl—” A stream of gasps and babble came out of the Human’s mouth.
“I don’t—”
Aryl stopped as the babble reshaped itself into words. “—understand me now? I . . . worried sleepteach could affect . . . fetal development . . . but Naryn . . . found an Om’ray way. All Sona can talk . . . to me . . . to anyone who . . . comes here. Amazing . . . You, too?”
Sona’s Dream Chamber. They’d used it to teach the language of the Trade Pact?
And she’d worried about supplies from the village.
The Strangers will be back. Naryn, flat and sure. We all know it.
Not in time to save Marcus. You should have waited—
Till you woke up? With a flash of irony. Tell that to the other seven hundred.
Marcus enjoys hearing it, Enris pointed out.
Indeed, the Human, oblivious to the emotions of the Om’ray around him, was still smiling. “Aryl,” he urged, “say something!”
She had to smile back. “How do—am I—I am speaking it!” The movements of her mouth and tongue were strange, like trying to shout and whisper at the same time, but he took her hand and squeezed it.
“Comspeak,” he assured her. “Wonderful to hear . . . in your voice, Aryl. Wonderful.”
This in two days, Aryl told herself, appalled. What else could they have done?
“Keep an eye on him, Yao. I’ll be back soon,” she told Marcus.
Once she knew.
Chapter 12
“WE’VE BEEN WORKING, young Aryl,” Husni said, Wwith a look that suggested Aryl could be better employed than asking the obvious. The elder walked between tables dragged into one of the corridors, as if supervising the storing of dried dresel. She had a group of unChosen busily wrapping flat pieces of some brown material in strips of what had been the fabric Sona used for shirts.
Decisions were made. Enris had followed her inside. They had to be.
Right or wrong ones?
That, he didn’t answer.
The pieces were covered in neat rows of symbols. Aryl glanced at them, then stared. “Those are words. Names.” Written in Comspeak. Which she could read!
She wasn’t sure which astounded her more.
“Why are there names?” she asked.
“Did you get her out of bed too soon?” Husni asked Enris, her wrinkles creasing deeper.
“It’s—”
“He did not,” Aryl objected, suspecting her Chosen had let her sleep so long for reasons of his own. “What are these?”
“Parches,” the elder said unhelpfully. “Anaj told us where to find them. As for the names,” Husni correctly read Aryl’s scowl and gave a wrinkled grin, “the Adepts added everyone to Sona’s records, but this Cloisters wouldn’t accept the rest.”
“Rest?” They weren’t, she hoped, expecting more.
“The names for families—in the other Clans. Our Adepts need to know who shares grandparents before they can decide which families should send unChosen on Passage. Everyone’s given us all the names they know. We’ve made two sets, one to leave here, and one ready to take with us—in case we ever leave. These,” Husni waved a hand over the parches, “record the birth of the M’hiray.”
Pride welled from all those in earshot.
Her head threatened to pound. “The ‘M’hiray’?”
“I thought of it,” Enris said modestly. “We needed a name for people like us. What do you think?”
That the world, and her Chosen, had gone mad while she slept? “We’re Om’ray,” Aryl managed to say between clenched teeth. “What nonsense is this?”
“No Om’ray can do what we can!” The outburst came from one of the unChosen at the nearest table. Since all quickly put their heads down to concentrate on folding, Aryl couldn’t tell which.
She didn’t care. She clamped a hand on Enris’ wrist and concentrated . . .
. . . as she’d hoped, the petal-roofed chamber was empty of all but sunlight.
“ ‘The M’hiray,’ ” she repeated acidly. “No more surprises, Enris.”
“Promise to stay still longer than a moment, then.”
“I—” Aryl deliberately sat on a bench and put her hands together, though every nerve screamed to move. Which worked much better as a way to find answers, she thought ruefully, in the canopy. “I promise.”
This gained her a doubtful look, surely deserved, but her Chosen sat across from her and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. His face was thinner than she remembered. A lock of black hair shadowed his dark eyes. Or was it something grim she felt?
“After the explosion, the water rose quickly,” he told her, sharing images at the same time. “Within tenths, we were trapped inside. There was no choice. We had to ’port for food. That was what everyone was waiting for—proof the M’hir was safe. Since then?” A laugh without humor. “I thought I was used to Ziba popping in and out. Wait till you’re in a room and fifty Chosen appear out of the air. ’Porting’s become—” his lips curled, “—remarkably casual.”
She’d ignored the oddly quick shifts in her sense of place; she had, as her Chosen said, been too close to an explosion. But they were real. The newcomers were ’porting from room to room instead of walking! Frivolous, wasteful . . . Aryl kept her temper with an effort, concentrated on turning her bracelet around and around on her wrist. “You’d think,” she said more calmly, “some would have gone home.”
“Apparently this remains home,” with a shrug that invited her to share the irony. “But you’re right. Once in a while, someone ’ports to their former Clan. For belongings, to check on those left behind, curiosity. Whatever the reason, no one stays long.”