Rift in the Sky

THE PITTED SURFACE of the old wall was warm beneath Aryl’s splayed fingers, returning the last of the sun’s gift. The air itself was cooling rapidly; mountain spring, colder than any season in Yena. Her coat hung on its hook in Sona. As if cold or coat mattered.

The ramp from the machine to the ground was metal. It rang with their careless steps. The cliff echoed their voices. The four who glanced beyond their fellows from time to time carried thick black objects in their hands. She marked them as threat.

The remainder were not. Aryl counted five, then a final two came out of the shadowed top, each holding a tether to a platform that floated in midair.

No faces at this distance, but the figure who led the rest wore Om’ray clothing, but wasn’t.

He’d gone to Site Three. Maybe that was a bigger place, with more resources. Maybe this was help coming.

Or it was something else. Her Chosen’s sending burned through her mind, left a foul taste.

On the dirt now. Walking as if they didn’t know or need care what lay beneath. Coming this way.

To the buildings. Where the artifacts would have been waiting, except for the ever-unpredictable Oud.

They could know she was here. Marcus had had devices to sense the presence of others. But none looked her way. A pair continued to talk in their incomprehensible words to one another, their tones easy. Triumphant.

Enris. Haxel. Aryl sent the image of the Strangers, then of the buildings. Received instant assent, before all the Om’ray tightened their shields. They would be ready, out of sight.

Instant chaos. The four pushed the others aside, aimed what must be weapons at her. They were tall and thin, skin scaled like a Tikitik but with heavy fanged jaws that were likely their preferred armament in a fight. Crests rose over their heads and behind where ears might have been.

A sharp command stopped their rush forward, lowered weapons, produced what sounded like a laugh. Naryn’s new knowledge would have been useful, but not essential. This, Aryl understood perfectly.

Not in a hurry; not tarrying either. They reached the long shadow of the cliff and kept moving toward her. Toward the stairs, Aryl corrected to herself. Marcus was still in front. She couldn’t explain to herself why she waited without a smile. Why she didn’t call out a greeting or expect one.

Aryl whirled and ran, abandoning the stairs for the wall, dropping to the uneven ground to hit that in full stride. She ran for the grove, her heart hammering in her ears and shouts behind.

Marcus led the way because a terrible thread cut deep into the flesh of his neck, a thread held by the Stranger behind him. He led the way—Aryl dodged by instinct and a stone burst where she’d been, shards stinging her side—he led because a weapon pressed into his spine hard enough to bow his body.

He led—she was in the grove and threw herself forward as nekis flamed behind her—because there was nothing alive in his eyes.

The brush of fingertips. The shift of hand and blade. They moved no more than this. They had no need.

The Strangers had the technology to save themselves. There was no need to walk noisily into a trap even a stitler would have suspected. But that technology, Aryl judged coldly, was their weakness here. Having beaten their own kind, they felt themselves superior to the “vestigial populations” left on this world . . .

Enris caught Marcus as he crumpled forward, Aryl’s first cut having been through the thread that bound him.

It was over, of course, in paired heartbeats. The Tuana held unused knives, giving the Yena startled looks. Being traders, Aryl thought curiously, had they planned to offer a warning?

Haxel wiped her blade on the nearest husk. “Enris, take the Human to Oran.” Declaring Marcus one of them without hesitation. “We’ll deal with what’s left in the air machine.” She picked up one of the dropped weapons. Nothing happened when she pointed it. She gave it an irritated shake.

“Only wor—” They turned at the faint, pained rasp of a voice. Marcus didn’t try to smile. Aryl doubted his mashed lips could have formed one. “Only—works—for owner,” he managed.

“Hush,” Enris said kindly. He cradled the Human in his arms with no obvious effort. “Haxel can manage.”

A gleam in the open eye. Gratitude or tears? “Think five more—in ship. Seven, most. Can’t let—any go,” he struggled. A finger scratched at Enris’ arm, lifted to point at the headless husk in its spreading orange-yellow pool. “Mind—mind—crawler—” He turned to press his face against Enris, his body convulsed in quiet sobs.

They scanned his memories, Aryl sent to the Om’ray staring at Marcus, her rage ice-cold beneath the calm. They could know about us.

Haxel’s scar whitened. “We were going to kill them anyway. It’s—” She broke off as Josel leaped from where she was standing and stared downward. “What is it?”

Windows broke the smooth side of the building, made an easy climb to its rounded top. A breeze slipped by her cheeks; she couldn’t tell if it was chill or warm. Didn’t care.

The bodies of the not-real went first. Aryl lay on her stomach to watch, ready to ’port if the building began to sink. But the Oud left it alone and churned only the ground between.

Quiet fell. Like the still of the canopy before the M’hir Wind, when the world took that final breath.

Aryl stood and walked to the end of the building, balanced on the top of its domed roof. She looked down at the air machine. Sun streaked its surface, shadowed the weapons on its humped back. The tip of the ramp remained exposed, a convenience for those expected back with what they valued.

The first sign of attack was a darkening in the dirt all around the air machine, a stirring.

As if a mouth opened in the world, the ground fell away beneath the machine. As it toppled and dropped, fire erupted with a roar from its end. If it was an effort to escape, all it accomplished was to obscure the hole with smoke and violent flashes of light. Aryl flinched, threw her arms over her face, began to concentrate . . . kaBOOM!

“Aryl. Beloved. Aryl?” A deep, gentle whisper in her ear. It tickled and her hair lifted to find the source. “Awake? It’s about time.” This not gentle at all. Aryl opened her eyes and blinked.

Pushing off the blanket, she sat up, ignoring the complaints of various abused body parts, and swung her legs off the platform. Enris stood nearby and watched, arms folded, shields tight.

Not tight enough. Waves of anxiety, dread, and a not-insignificant OUTRAGE beat at her. “Stop that,” she grumbled, rubbing her forehead. “I’m fine.”

The waves eased slightly. His ferocious scowl didn’t. “You aren’t fine. You were close to an explosion.”

Aryl rose to her feet, pleasantly surprised to be clean. Her hair tumbled free around her bare shoulders and she fought it back with both hands, looking for its net. “What’s been hap—” The rest was smothered as Enris wrapped her tightly in his big arms. Aryl patted him comfortingly, though she winced at what was, by the feel, a bruised rib. Or two. Never do that again, he sent.

I didn’t know it would blow up, she said reasonably. Though this was the second time, in her experience, which didn’t say much for Stranger technology. Enris, love. My ribs? Not to mention she couldn’t talk while he squeezed her like this.

He changed his hold to cup her face in both hands, studying it while she waited. Hair coiled around his wrists, looped its red-gold up his arms to stroke along his jaw. Finally, his scowl faded. He planted a firm kiss on her forehead, then her mouth. “Oran did a good job.”

Aryl pushed away. “How long have I been lying here?” And where was here? She looked around for the first time.

One of the Cloisters’ small rooms. She hadn’t lain on a platform—she’d been on their bed, from Sona. The weathered wood and rock looked wrong against the pale yellow walls. There was more, all wrong. Supplies, blankets, baskets of clothing.

Enris chose to answer her first question. “You’ve been lying here, scaring me, for two days.”

The corner of his generous mouth twitched. “The world hasn’t ended and no one’s come knocking.”

Two days . . . Finished with the tunic, Aryl fought hair until Enris tossed her hairnet to her. “As for what we’ve done—”

Hair secured, Aryl shook her head impatiently. She reclaimed the Human’s disk and ’scanner, tucking both into pockets, then threw her knife belt around her hips and secured it with a quick tug.

“I can see for myself.” Done? They’d settled in, that was what they’d done. They’d had time to ’port the entire village here, plus probably most of the supplies from the mounds. She picked up her Speaker’s Pendant. Put it down. Everything else could wait. “Marcus?”

A damp breeze chilled her face as Enris opened his arms to let her go. Aryl stared around in shock. This was the Cloisters’ platform, still covered in dirt and dust. There was the wall around it—

—a wall that looked over a wide, dark lake. At its far edge, where there should be nekis, only a few scattered tips showed through water laced with white foam. Its near edge was the wall. Water slapped against it, sprayed into her face. A log tumbled past, roots helplessly in air.

“We think it was the explosion,” Enris said. “Whatever the Oud did to divert the waterfall isn’t working anymore. The upper part of the valley is flooded like this, though by Sona the river returns to its old path.” He didn’t mention his dam; it couldn’t have withstood this, Aryl realized with an inner pang. “The Stranger camp was destroyed,” he finished.

Enris sighed and gestured apology, his hand raised to point left. The others refused to let a not-real inside.

She didn’t reply to this, didn’t do anything but turn and walk along the platform, following the outer curve of the Cloisters. She passed window after window and dared not think of those inside, who’d leave—who’d leave—

There. A cluster of white crates for walls. Sona blankets for a roof. This was all they’d done for him?

Aryl broke into a run, hearing Enris behind her. She burst through the blanket that made a door and stopped in her tracks.

Warm and dry. Dim; the oillights couldn’t match daylight. A faint, unfamiliar smell. Two narrow crates were tables; one held an untouched meal, the other an assortment of items that belonged in pockets but not on Cersi. Other crates for seats. A bed. The breeze wafted the blanket overhead.

Sian surged to his feet at the sight of her; so did Naryn. Little Yao stayed where she was, snuggled in the curve of the Hu man’s arm.

While he—while Marcus lay against pillows, a shadow that smiled and coughed and wasn’t right. Wasn’t right.

Enris, who’d entered at her heels, spread his hands in an eloquent gesture. “She didn’t wait.”

Aryl didn’t listen to them. She walked to the bed, found a smile for Yao, lost it when she looked at Marcus. “I’m sorry—” Her voice failed, too.

Perfect words, quietly spoken, the small pained gasps for breath the only sign of effort. Why he wasn’t already dead, she couldn’t guess. Bones stood out on his face and hands. The skin of both was purpled by bruises, pale yellow where it wasn’t. His neck had been neatly bandaged; fresh red stains marked a still-open wound. “They took better care of me,” she told him, and planned to ’port their precious Healer into the floodwater at her first opportunity.

“Oran tried. So did Sian.” Naryn was standing on the other side of the bed. She drew the child from Marcus with a gentle hand and handed her a cup. “Yao, our friend’s run out of his drink. Please go and ask Rorn if there’s any sombay left.”

Marcus looked anxious, as if he’d transgressed. “Everyone . . . has been kind. Aryl. Don’t . . . be . . . angry.”

Was she that easy to read? Probably. Aryl forced her expression into something calmer. “You haven’t been eating.”

His eyelids had healed, the eyes themselves were unutter ably weary. “Left . . . for the big guy. Not . . . hungry.”

“The real hurt is inside.” Sian touched a forefinger to his own head. Any mindtouch causes pain. He’s severely damaged. There’s nothing I can do.

She waited. Marcus met her gaze for a long moment, then tipped his head on the pillow, the way he had when about to ask one of his odd questions. “This . . . not your fault. You know . . . that.”

“I know.” They’d left him to confront whatever waited at Site Three, alone, because the summons had been impossible to resist. They’d left him a captive, to be abused and hurt, because she’d had no way to find him. They’d saved him as soon as they could, and been too late.

“You’re a . . . good friend,” this with almost a real smile. “But this is . . . important. The truth between us. Mindcrawler no threat . . . to most Humans. Understand? Only to . . . some. Only to Human . . . telepaths.”

Marcus continued. “Strong Human telepath . . . can talk like you do. Not teleport.” This with relief. “They can protect themselves. Others—” his hand lifted to his own chest “—vulnerable. Understand me? No ability. Only weak mind . . . easy target . . . weak.” A tear slipped from one eye, left a glistening trail along one cheek.

He wasn’t weak, in any way. “I cut off its head,” Aryl assured him. Whatever “it” had been. Not Human. Ugly. “Did they tell you?”

The Human’s eyes widened, then he sputtered a laugh. “Friends,” when he could talk again. “Good friends.”

Aryl had touched his mind before. She knew, as the others didn’t, where the danger of trespass lay within the Human, the whisper-thin distance between emotion and intention, between memory and self. Careful to stay away from his thoughts, she lowered her shields and let her inner sense float outward.

No room for doubt. Sian was trained in healing a mind; she’d done it only once, in desperation, to help someone she loved. Myris.

Well, she loved this not-Om’ray, too, this Stranger who mangled words and smiled with his eyes, who’d set aside his life’s work to protect a people he hadn’t known existed a year ago. Who lay here in trust, more alone than anyone or anything in the world, while she was surrounded by the glow of her kind.

More. Pain . . . confusion . . . fragments of emotion unwound, like a dresel wing unfurling from its stalk, slowly at first.

Memories came too, rattled like pods drying in the wind, bound in fear and pain. His capture. Rough hands. Waiting . . . waiting . . . knowing the worst was to come. Revulsion. Despair.

Aryl let the memories slide past, didn’t react even to her own face, hair wild, eyes calm, the blur of a knife. Though she smiled inwardly, sharing a joy as fierce as any Yena’s.

Aryl stayed. This was important, whatever it was. Her mind raced through words and images, tried to comprehend what wasn’t real. Noise or silence? Old bone or rock? Om’ray or Human? Differences fought each other, weakened her concentration. She became desperate for anything familiar.

Here. Safely distant from Marcus, a presence solid as the buttress roots that held the great rastis so they bent to the M’hir Wind but didn’t fall. Always.

He shouldn’t be with her, not here; that he was meant everything. Aryl steadied, sent sincere affection to her Chosen, then returned to what confused her.

These—these were the wounds left by the mindcrawler as it ripped through the Human’s mind!

Her mother had scanned her. This wasn’t the same. This was no trained intrusion after a secret, an unpleasant invasion that left its victim whole, if exposed. This was the swarm consuming what it touched, full of greed and heedless of harm.

With mounting horror, Aryl followed the damage. She tried to grasp its extent, to find a place to attempt healing, but the more she looked, the more she found, as if the wounds festered and spread.

What to do? She had to do something . . . what? She didn’t know how to help an Om’ray with such hurts.

Enris was right. She knew it, though it was agony to be helpless. She tightened her shields and opened her eyes.

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!!!!

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.

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?”

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.