BEFORE THE DOOR COULD CLOSE after Morgan, I stepped into the opening. “Move aside, please.”
Gurutz’s attention had wandered after Morgan and the others. He started at my voice, leaking astonishment. “What did you say?”
I chose to ignore his lack of manners. “Risking my Chosen outside has changed our arrangement,” I informed him. “We’re going to examine the levels we’ll be using.” I smiled. “You’re welcome to come along.”
“I can’t leave my—” Flustered, he looked around for support. It having left with Morgan, he deflated. “You can’t. This is a matter for—”
I moved forward.
“—Council.” The poor Om’ray hesitated, eyes dropping to my pendant, then backed out of my way. Attitude, my Human would say, was half the battle with aliens. Not always the better half, but I’d taken his point. Trusting those behind me to follow my example, I sauntered down the hall of Sona’s Cloisters as if I’d lived there my entire life.
I’d left Barac in charge, much to his chagrin, bringing with me those most likely to make sense of what we might find: Jacqui, Deni sud Kessa’at, Nik and Josa sud Prendolat, and—after some thought—Degal di Sawnda’at.
Morgan wondered what had changed since Aryl di Sarc walked these halls. So did I; so did she, though her memories of this place were filled with loss. I could wish to spare her further grief.
I respected my great-grandmother’s courage too much to even try.
Degal, like most of the others, didn’t know Aryl existed. I hadn’t felt inclined to share that a “ghost” inhabited my fatherless baby, there being a sufficiency of strange for them to face at the moment.
What Degal did know were the Prime Laws, the guiding principles set in place, I now suspected, not by the M’hiray but by the Maker in this Cloisters. Degal’s familiarity with the finer details as well as resulting Council decisions might not seem immediately of use.
I was betting it would. There were deeper reasons here. Implications that teased at me—or was that terrified? I wasn’t the only one to question this world. Morgan could name several within the Trade Pact where more than one intelligence had evolved in tandem, but those were either combined as obligate symbionts or isolated by adaptation to physically incompatible environments.
If Cersi was the Om’ray homeworld, where had the Oud and Tikitik come from—and why?
The first mystery to solve, however, was this building. My new memories told me something of its structure, as did those of the other M’hiray the Maker had intended to serve as Adepts, yet there were gaps not even Aryl could fill. As for the Dream Chamber?
It held a fascination I thoroughly distrusted.
The corridor was illuminated by light emerging from the curve where walls met ceiling, as we’d seen in the Council Chamber; unlike that space, this floor was less resilient underfoot and pale yellow. The outer wall was broken by a series of large triple arches, the inner being a metal door, the two outer being clear windows. Opposite those, on the inner wall, were smaller doors. Aryl showed me the trick to opening them, but I stopped after looking into the third identical room, each empty and too small for living quarters.
We passed framed art at intervals, none of it comprehensible. Deni grew so intent on whatever his device’s display was telling him, I waited for him to walk into a wall. He certainly wasn’t observing for himself.
Jacqui was, eyes round with wonder, head turning each time we passed a window. The Chosen pair divided their attention between the device Nik held in one hand, and where we were going.
With occasional dark looks at Degal.
Forget him, I wanted to tell them. Forget what Degal’s Council had forbidden that had driven them to my mother and her lonely lab, starting with a daughter they hadn’t allowed to be fostered. I wanted—but wouldn’t. We’d forgotten too much recently.
You can’t protect them from their choices.
I smiled at Aryl’s crisp advice. I but follow your example, Great-grandmother.
Deni stopped at one of the frames and we gathered around him. It looked like all the others, to me, of the same gray-green metal as the pendant weighing on my neck. Like the pendant, its disks and squares bore symbols. Not identical, I judged, comparing the two, but similar enough to have been made by the same hands.
If hands had been involved. Nothing about the Om’ray suggested they were capable of such construction. Another mystery.
Show me. After I did so, Aryl replied, I never knew what they were. Marcus—a poignant pause—I wondered if his clever devices could have told me, but he wasn’t allowed inside.
“Deni?” I asked for us both, for he’d brought up his own.
Only to put aside one instrument to hurriedly fumble out another, repeating the same motion over the metal. He reached along a section of bare wall.
“I—a moment, please.” He touched Nik and Josa, consulting in private, as was their habit. Before Degal could be offended by this breach of manners, Deni dropped his hand, staring at the framed symbols. “It’s a control panel—or input of some kind.” He looked down the hall, mouth moving as if counting those in view. “They’re connected within the wall.”
I asked what I thought a sensible question, given we stood in an otherwise ordinary hallway. “What are they for?”
His smile was rapturous. “I have no idea.”
Om’ray technology? Aryl sounded fascinated. Enris always claimed it was so, that we were more, once.
But what? I might not taste change, but this left a sick feeling in my stomach. Rows of empty rooms. Panel after panel of controls across from them. Storage?
Or a prison.
Maybe I had another clue to offer. I passed Deni the pendant, pointing out the symbols. “Do these mean anything?”
The three huddled over it, scanning and muttering.
Sira. It was Barac. Andi says more Om’ray have entered the Cloisters. Coming to you.
We’d been noticed. My point made concerning Morgan, I saw no gain in further confrontation until I’d reason for it. “We’ve company,” I advised the others. “Let’s see as much as we can first.”
“We concur.” Nik wasn’t answering me. She handed back the pendant. “It’s a transmitter.”
I paused, the chain over my head. Not was, is. “It’s still working?” My voice had a regrettable squeak.
“If you’d put it on, please, Sira?”
And why would I do that? But the three gave me such earnest looks, I finished the motion, feeling the pendant thud into place. The Tikitik can detect the metal of the pendant—and of tokens, Aryl ventured. Is that what they mean?
I don’t think so.
Heads went down over instruments. Then up. Nik spoke, “Increased signal emission, both strength and complexity. I’d say it’s intended to be worn.”
By a Speaker, Aryl qualified, her mind voice as troubled as I felt. They all wear one. Om’ray, Oud, Tikitik. Only Speakers may communicate with another race.
Making the pendants the perfect way to overhear that communication.
What was this world?