Reap the Wild Wind (31 page)

* * *

They raced truenight through the maze of living rock, Aryl’s nerves growing more and more frayed as the shadows deepened. They were spared rain, though it fell in the canopy and fed cold mists that slithered around their legs. In their brief but necessary pauses, she could hear the grind of stone against stone over their ragged breathing. Hunters, then, she decided, as if it made any difference.
They had to reach the Watchers.
She’d done her best to explain to Marcus why they had to hurry; there was no sign he understood. But he didn’t argue. When he began to stagger more than walk, Aryl undid her makeshift rope from around her waist and pressed it into his hands, holding the other end. When he began to shiver, she wrapped the section of stranger-blanket over his shoulders, amused by his startled recognition.
It wasn’t until they literally stumbled out on the wide, flat ledge that she believed they’d make it. “The Watchers,” she announced with relief.
There was more light, away from the rocks. Aryl didn’t know why there were none below the cliff, unless there was some inexplicable danger to them here. She’d never heard of the things, but Yena came here from the canopy, not the slope. For a moment, she let herself face where the vegetation burst from the chasm, breathing in the heady aroma of real living things. There would be bridges and ladders reaching to this place, leading back home.
There would be Tikitik. As far as she could tell, some, perhaps many, had matched their course along the mountain, still staying within the groves.
Aryl sighed and turned back to the now-impressive cliff, assessing their next steps. Deep in shadow, it towered easily the height of ten Om’ray here. To the right, it reared skyward before dropping straight into the chasm, but that wasn’t their goal. Not yet.
“There,” she told her companion, indicating those openings above their heads.
“Oh.”
The dismay in that wordless syllable caught her by surprise. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “We’ll be safe. Om’ray stay there. There could be supplies.” Her stomach growled its complete approval.
“You go.” Marcus reeled where he stood, as if too stubborn to fall. “Aryl stronger. Climb good.”
Aryl snorted. “Trust me, Marcus. You can do this.” She gave the rope they both held a gentle tug. “Let’s go.”
“Help. Help comes.” Weary, rather than convincing.
“Your help is late.” She saw him wince and relented. He’d been unable to explain either his hope for help or its lack of appearance. “If we’re safe,” she said as persuasively as she could given her impatience, “help can find us.”
A nod, followed by a frankly terrified stare at the cliff.
“You’ll see,” she told him, tugging the rope again.
They entered the cliff’s shadow together, both shivering at the sudden chill. Water stained its front. Condensation from the mist, Aryl guessed, since there was no sign of water anywhere else. She licked a drop caught on her finger; the acrid taste made her spit. They continued along the cliff until she found the place that matched the image in her mind. “Wait here,” she told Marcus.
“Not l-l-leave,” he chattered through his teeth, clutching the blanket.
Aryl handed him her boots, then began to climb. Her target was an oval opening, three of her body lengths above. Not far, but this wasn’t like her other ascent. The rock was wet and smooth, its surface unlit. She relied on touch to find tiny cracks; it took her remaining strength to wedge her fingertips and toes into them for a grip. Carefully, slowly, she made her way up.
By the time her hand hit the edge of the opening, Aryl was gasping with effort, but that solid grip was all she needed to pull herself up and through. She lay flat for an instant, then stood, leaving Marcus’ bag on the ground. Yena came here annually, to clean and prepare the Watchers. As she’d expected, there was a sturdy ladder rolled inside, ready to drop.
Letting it fall, she hurried down it herself. “Your turn,” she told Marcus.
Although he brightened at the sight of something more manageable than the cliff, and started with enthusiasm, Aryl treated the Human the way any Om’ray parent would a child. She followed close behind, so close his back pressed against her chest, and braced her arms each time he released a handhold and reached for the next.
Just as well. He began to slow, then tire. The last few rungs were agony for them both, as Aryl did her best to support his weight, and he did his best to keep moving.
“Close, Marcus,” she urged. “One more.”
At the top, she put her shoulder under his rump and shoved, throwing him forward and out of her way. While he gasped for breath, she pulled the ladder up behind them.
Just as well. “Look,” she said.
He rolled over. Aryl could see the gleam that marked his eyes. “What is? Help?”
“Not help,” she snorted.
With sunset, the cliff’s shadow had grown to lap over what had been the first of the rocks. Had been, for where she and Marcus had stood to look up at the cliff was now well-populated. Small ones, large ones, some atop the others. Nothing moved; several things had.
“Not help,” he agreed, making a strained noise she decided might be a laugh. “You know these?”
“No.” She shrugged. “Many creatures have their seasons. Om’ray only come here before the M’hir. Until now,” she added ruefully
“Good.”
It was Aryl’s turn to almost laugh. “Rest, Marcus. Then we continue.”
“Here stay?” A pat on the stone. “Safe is.”
She shared the longing to rest in his voice, but knew better. “Not really. Wait here.”
What she hunted should be at the back of this hole. It was too dark to see, so she moved with her hands held out, her bare feet feeling their way along the grit-covered, though level floor.
Suddenly, she could see.
“Better?” Marcus asked, one hand pulling his bag over his shoulder, the other leaking light through its fingers.
Aryl restrained any mention of how she could have used it sooner. Considering she’d assumed anything he’d bring would have no practical use, that wasn’t fair. “Thank you.” She continued searching with the Human and his glow at her shoulder. “There,” she exclaimed in triumph as the light revealed a door.
Not any door, she frowned, making the connection, but a beautiful metal door, twin to those guarding entrance to the Cloisters.
At least this didn’t need an Adept to open. Aryl reached to the top and, remembering what she’d been taught, pulled the correct sequence of four latches to unlock it, ignoring the fifth, which would lock it again. The door turned open obediently. Beyond was dim, but welcoming light. “Through here,” she said, glancing around for Marcus.
His free hand stretched toward the door, not touching it.
The light from his other hand revealed an expression that, on an Om’ray, Aryl judged, would have signaled severe indigestion. “What is?”
The obvious answer died on her lips. “This is the way to the Watchers, Marcus. It belongs to my clan, the Yena Om’ray. There’s no harm here. Safe,” she resorted to the word he kept using.
“Old, is.”
That again. She scowled at him. “Of course it’s old. Come or stay here.” She suspected her smile was the thoroughly unpleasant one Taisal used when required.
It had the same effect. Marcus mumbled something to himself, but followed her.
The construction within resembled the Cloisters as well, with the same yellow material underfoot and on all sides. The lighting, barely adequate, came from the joins in the tall tubelike wall. Aryl led the Human up wide steps that circled a central pillar, grateful herself not to climb anymore. She’d offered to carry his bag again, now curious what might be inside. He’d refused, hugging it to his chest.
Something was bothering him. From past experience, Aryl thought wearily, best she didn’t learn what.
At the top was a landing with an identical door, opening on a flat, arched space within the rock. As she locked this door behind them, Aryl was almost too tired to reconcile the images in her mind with what she saw.
Close at hand, a homely pile of Yena flasks and slings hung from hooks on the wall. No beds, but mattresses leaned below the hooks, ready for use. A table and six chairs. Comfort for the caretakers.
Their charges filled the rest of the space— the Yena Watchers, their smooth surface agleam with polish. They descended from the ceiling to within her height of the floor. To the right, they passed through the wall to where, unseen from this vantage, they opened their mouths to the outside world. To the left, they rose in long parallel curves, the floor and ceiling climbing with them, until all disappeared in the distance.
If they walked— or, rather, climbed, for there were ladders— the length of the great tubes, they’d arrive just below the mountain’s upper ridge. There, the Watchers gaped, ready and waiting for the M’hir to howl down their length, producing the alarm to rouse the Yena to Harvest.
Aryl pointed to the nearest before Marcus could spout “what is?” “A Watcher. When the M’hir Wind comes over the mountain, it blows thus.” She cupped her hands together in front of her mouth, and blew through them. It produced little more than a
whoosh
, but he nodded.
“Watchers,” he replied. “Loud.” This with a grimace.
From his reaction, he’d heard them. Implying he’d been close to the Harvest, Aryl realized. Something else she didn’t care to think about.
“Supplies,” she suggested, hoping she was right about that. If not, they’d have to leave at dawn to search for water and food. She doubted the Tikitik would be gone.
On the bright side, the living rocks might be.

Interlude

T
HE OUD WAS TRYING TO KILL him. It just didn’t know how.
Only possible explanation, Enris assured himself. He imagined he could hear someone snickering. Probably Mauro and Naryn, having a last laugh at his expense. He couldn’t blame them. The not-quite death of Enris Mendolar was a joke on them all.
“Faster. Faster.” The Oud dropped back to the floor and humped away.
“I can’t go faster!” he shouted after it. How long had he been running after the creature? Half a day? A full fist? Time had no meaning below ground. Too long. The Oud disappeared around a bend, and Enris staggered to a jog. Always the same. The monster insisted he keep up, yet couldn’t comprehend that Om’ray had only two legs.
“Two legs!” he bellowed. “Two!”
He’d argued with it, thrown rocks at it, laid down and ignored it, desperate to rest. Such futile protests ended the same way, with the Oud looming over him and a clawlike appendage seizing him— by what didn’t matter— to drag him along in the dirt until he moved on his own. Enris had quickly learned to protect his head; the Oud, not so quickly, learned not to grab him by a leg.
He’d dropped his precious pack. It wouldn’t let him retrieve it. He’d found a water tap and had thrown himself in front of it, drinking in great gulps. It wouldn’t let him finish. In final insult, the Oud was leading him away from Vyna.
“You . . . want . . . to . . . kill . . . me,” he panted. “Try . . . a . . . rock.”
The Oud covered ground with incredible speed; it knew this landscape. Still, Enris would have chanced trying to escape down another tunnel but for one thing.
The token.
Without it, he was already dead. He couldn’t move on his own through Oud territory. He couldn’t enter Tikitik. It was doubtful another Clan would admit him. His own . . .
“Give it back!” he begged the mass of gray ahead of him. In answer, it humped away faster.
Why take it? In his coherent moments, he wondered if the Oud was supposed to carry it for him, if he had an escort— albeit one completely ignorant of the physical limitations of Om’ray. At others, he worried this was a homicidal game, the true end for all who left on Passage, that the Oud led him to a pit where he would fall, fall and land on the bodies of those who’d just left, Irm and Eran, bodies atop a pile of the bones of other unChosen.
It said a great deal about his state of mind that he preferred either to the alternative, that the Oud was sane and had good reason for this panicked flight.

* * *

When the Oud finally stopped, Enris didn’t. Half asleep, he collided with its back end with enough momentum to send him flying to land on his. He sat there, blinking away dust, and waited to see what would happen next.
“Here are.”
“Here” looked like everywhere else they’d been. A newer tunnel, with lighting, heat, and water, the walls and ceiling ready for Chewer Oud to polish them smooth. He wiped his sweating face against his sleeve and kept waiting.
Another Oud approached them, naked and moving with its body pressed to the floor. It stopped alongside the other. His Oud— not that Enris wanted the creature, but he’d started thinking of it that way— reared and smacked the newcomer with its front/head end. The blow wasn’t light; the newcomer tumbled over and over until it struck the wall.
It immediately scuttled back on its little legs to take the same position as before.
His Oud, still half reared, patted it. The other quivered as if in joy. Enris looked away, fearing this was the prelude to Oud sex— a subject Om’ray knew nothing about. He had no intention of being the first.
“Things, yours.”
The voice startled him awake. Sure enough, the newcomer Oud held out his bag. Enris grabbed it, digging inside for a flask. Only once he’d had a good, long drink, then another, did he bother to look at the creatures again.
And was just in time to see the newcomer take the token from His Oud and convey it down to wherever they stored things. “Wait!”
Too late. The newcomer rose to the ceiling, took hold, and scurried away, upside down.
Now he was to chase
that
one? Maybe his was worn out. Enris forced himself to his feet, though he’d lost feeling in them some time ago, and cursed the Oud. He shifted his bag to one shoulder and started walking.
“Mine now,” His Oud exclaimed. “Token other. Find no. Safe.”
He stopped moving before it could seize him. “I don’t understand.”
“Strangers and Om’ray. Come.”
“Let me rest first,” he begged, beyond shame. “Please. I can’t run anymore.”
“Not run.”
He should have specified no dragging, Enris thought, tense as the creature came closer.
It moved beyond him to the left-hand wall, then disappeared. “Come!” he heard.
Dead or dreaming, he assured himself, but curiosity brought him stumbling to the wall.
Which wasn’t a wall, Enris discovered. Or, rather, there were two walls, identical and overlapping, which gave the illusion of one. The gap between had to be a tight fit for the Oud, the end of which he watched disappear again.
Keeping a hand on the stone, Enris followed, this time not surprised to find His Oud had simply turned itself right around to move through another gap between walls. The Oud version of an alleyway? A shortcut between neighboring tunnels? How many had he missed . . . ?
He stepped out into what wasn’t a tunnel, though the entrances of several met here. Light— real sunlight— poured from above. Enris looked up to find himself standing at the bottom of an immense tower, one wall broken by windows of irregular shape and size, the other four solid. There were Chewer Oud clustered around the topmost windows. From this distance, he couldn’t tell what they were doing. The construction was of uneven stone and earth, as if the Oud had done little more than hollow a mound from within. How such a pile could be strong was a mystery.
Like everything else, he thought, staring at those pieces of sky with a longing that made him tremble. He
reached
and felt some relief. Pana was closer than Tuana, Yena and Amna almost as near. Vyna? He turned his face to it. Not so distant now. The Oud had done him a favor.
If he survived the kindness.
“Come.” His Oud was waiting beside another tunnel mouth, tapping impatiently. “Comecomecome.”
Enris walked across the broad floor, fine dust isolating every length of sunbeam. He shuddered at the relative darkness of the tunnel, for the first time understanding Yuhas’ horror of such places, but didn’t dare hesitate.
This tunnel was another of the rough type, with only a few loose glowstrips. The light from those was soon overwhelmed by brightness ahead. The tunnel became a ramp. Enris found himself walking more and more quickly, despite the slope and his exhaustion. This had to lead outside.
And it did, though not to any view he’d expected. Enris stopped with his Oud, gazing at a confusion of vehicles, most in motion. Some were the platform type, bearing Oud dressed in the fabric and clear head domes he’d last seen in Tuana. Others bore long oval shapes of metal, resembling mechanical Oud. He dodged back and coughed at the dust as one of these swept by too near and quickly for comfort. There were some with sides taller than two Om’ray, and small round ones that could pass beneath the others. He couldn’t keep track. The sound of treads and scraping metal was a constant din.
All this within a great walled circle, penetrated by ramps, and domed by sky.
His Oud was on the move again. Enris followed, staying as close as he dared. They went around the outer edge, to his relief. There was no discernible order to the traffic, and collisions were frequent. Those involved merely backed and tried again to pass one another. An Om’ray wouldn’t last long.
A loud roar preceded an overhead shadow. Enris ducked instinctively before gazing up in wonder. A flying vehicle. Everyone knew the Oud had vehicles to travel through the air. Such made regular passes over the fields, though at a considerable height. He’d never seen one this close. It looked impossible, heavy and thick, with ridiculous little wings. Nothing, Enris vowed to himself, would make him trust his life to
that.
His Oud stopped, rearing to speak. Three small vehicles changed direction hurriedly to avoid it, slamming into one another. “Om’ray fly. Goodgoodgood.”
Almost nothing.