Reap the Wild Wind

Chapter 22

ARYL ...

Aryl didn’t stop walking at the inner touch, but her attention was no longer on her surroundings. She’d been waiting for privacy to contact her mother. To be honest, she’d been waiting for courage too.

It seemed Taisal could no longer wait, so Aryl opened her mind to the other, making the link. Mother.

Her mother’s sending was colored by emotion; a residue of anger mingled with concern. What has happened? Are you all right?

Mother . . . we’re not alone here! As if forming the words made them true, Aryl could barely contain her fear, torn by the urge to somehow look beyond their link into the seething darkness. What—who—might she find?

Almost scorn. We’re never alone here, daughter. This is the hollow between minds, where the dead linger and the Lost hide. Don’t be afraid. They’re harmless unless you follow or answer them. Don’t look for anyone. Those here . . . they’re no longer Om’ray. They are shadows. Nothing more.

The voice of experience? Aryl shuddered. I won’t. I won’t.

Tell me where you are.

With the strangers. Aryl sent her view of the lake and platform.

Something hard gripped her around the waist, shattering her concentration and the link.

“What do!??”

Aryl blinked and found herself suspended in the air in one of the Carasian’s great claws. Its eyes moved aside to reveal two knifelike jaws as long as her arms. Aryl squeezed her eyes closed and tried not to scream. “What do!?” it roared at her again.

“Careful, Janex!” Marcus cautioned. Aryl peered down at him, hoping for rescue, but he frowned at her, not the Carasian, before uttering a string of his own words.

Janex, its focus never leaving Aryl, answered—mostly—in real words. “Grist! Aryl grist different. Better now.” The last word was calmer, as if Janex had taken time to think something through and been relieved. Sure enough, the claw eased Aryl back to the floor.

She smacked the claw the instant it released her. “Don’t do that!” she scolded, as furious as she’d been scared. This was the stranger she’d almost trusted. Now? Aryl backed against the wall, her arms tight around her waist, though it hadn’t hurt her.

It could have. She’d underestimated the strength of that unusual body. And maybe something else. Had it somehow detected her connection to Taisal? Aryl tried opening her inner sense, to feel anything from the Carasian’s mind.

Chaos!

“Ouch!” she exclaimed, retreating behind the tightest possible shields, her eyes wide.

Janex, if it were possible for a creature built like a machine, looked smug. “Grist, me,” it said. “Good smell, Aryl.”

Aryl sniffed cautiously. The fresh lake, something musky from Pilip’s direction. “I don’t understand.”

Marcus looked from her to his companion. “I don’t understand,” he agreed.

“Problem, not.” Janex waved a jaunty claw. “Go on. Show Aryl.”

Aryl, equally willing to avoid the topic of what grist smelled like, or what it was, continued walking.

They took her to the roof, up a winding solid ramp that suited the Carasian’s bulk and maneuverability, though it wasted too much of the building’s interior to Aryl’s way of thinking. Pilip, on the other hand, clung desperately to a railing until they were again on a flat surface. She tried not to pity it.

The roof itself was cluttered with more of the plain white boxes, but most of these bore some kind of symbol, the lines sharper and more angular than the Tikitik’s. A few larger boxes had doors, implying they were more than boxes, but these weren’t, apparently, what she was here to be shown.

Around a pile of loosely coiled ropes—Marcus and his companions were, Aryl judged, remarkably sloppy for all their technology—she found herself at a step that led to a raised solid circle. Around its rim were six identical stalks, plantlike in that they were topped by something else. The something else was like a box, but this time with metal twigs and balls sticking out at all angles.

Not decoration. Aryl was reminded of the poles that protruded from the stalk of the Cloisters.

There were obstacles in the way: folded white petal-things that they had to walk over or around. Aryl bent to touch one. It looked like window gauze, but felt hard and strong.

“Cover,” Janex explained, doing a fair job with its smaller claws to pantomime the petals rising up to protect the circle and its stalks.

Aryl . . .?

Seeing the immediate swivel of eyes her way, Aryl sent a hasty later . . . then made herself smile at the Carasian. This could become, she warned herself, a problem. “Cover,” she nodded.

“Aryl,” Marcus called from atop the circle. Pilip followed him, going at once to one of the metal stalks. Aryl stepped up, feeling the floor shake slightly as the Carasian did the same. The Trant made a scolding noise. Odd. Why would this floor shake, and no other?

Aryl controlled her curiosity. Marcus was eagerly waving her to one of the stalks. When she came closer, cautiously, he gestured. “Seeker. Look.”

She wasn’t sure if he meant to look at the lake surrounding them, or at what appeared to be a larger version of the colored panel of the bioscanner device. Marcus, guessing why she hesitated, indicated the panel. “Watch.”

He spoke to Pilip in their words; the Trant did something to its stalk. Aryl jumped as a round disk rose from amid the mass of boxes on the roof to hover directly over them. She craned her neck to study it, recognizing features she’d captured in her drawing. The device from the Harvest!

Her triumph faded. Thought Traveler had been right; it had been the strangers. She had its proof. But knowing that wasn’t enough, not anymore. Not to her. They had names. Marcus, Janex, Pilip. They had a place, here. Above all, they had a purpose—and whatever else, it wasn’t harmless. Those who had died, she reminded herself grimly, had had names, too.

This close, she could see inside the device. Its components were suspended within a clear material; none had a function she could guess.

It floated away, over the roof railing, to hover in midair above the lake. It seemed to wait for instructions.

“How does it fly?” Aryl asked.

Marcus shrugged, another familiar movement. “Pilip?”

The Trant glanced at her from its stalk, pressing its lips shut in a thin line. Meaning no, in any language, Aryl thought. She scowled back.

“It is tool,” rumbled Janex. “Seeker tool.”

The Tikitik wanted her to connect the strangers to the device. Much better, Aryl thought, to learn why it had been at the Harvest in the first place. “What does it seek?” she asked. Her voice was strained to her own ears; none of them seemed to notice. After her initial reaction to the bioscanner, maybe they expected her to be uncomfortable around any of their technology.

She didn’t care about their opinion.

“Look. Here, look.”

“Look here,” she said and obeyed Marcus’ summons to direct her eyes at the panel. “What—” Aryl closed her mouth, concentrating on what she saw.

Instead of blank, now the panel was a window showing this roof. She considered the view—too high, too far—and turned to point at the hovering device. “From that?” she asked.

The Human looked astonished. Aryl frowned at him. What did he think? That an Om’ray, used to seeing images from other minds, couldn’t grasp something so obvious? “It looks this way,” she told him dryly, gesturing her meaning. “I understand.”

How it looked was probably as secret as how it flew, but now she was more concerned with the possibilities. It was a spy. That was clear. What wasn’t clear was why it would spy on the Harvest—why it would interfere.

A breeze ruffled her hair against her cheeks as she looked at Marcus, at a loss. How to ask such questions?

“Aryl, where?” This with a gesture to the panel. “Look.”

It was a place to start, though she was unsure what he wanted. This time, the image was of a distant shoreline, moving past quickly. A quick glance at the device showed her it was now higher and had turned. She looked back at the panel. “Can it go closer?” she asked. Pilip muttered something, but the shore leaped toward her.

Not where she’d ridden the osst—that was immediately apparent. This must be the far side of the Lake of Fire, beyond their view. Lifeless stone rose in great steps from the water. At the top? Aryl blinked in amazement. The top was a different land altogether, flat as far as the image showed, covered with an even growth of brown hair. Not hair, she realized in the next instant, grasping at the distances the device so effortlessly revealed. Plants—all the same plants, with thin leaves that moved like water in the wind. “Oud,” she said. Her inner sense confirmed the direction of the device had turned. “Pana,” she pronounced, pointing away from the panel. She shaded her eyes with one hand, able to see only a line on the horizon, below building clouds.

“ ‘Pana?’ ” repeated Marcus, looking where she indicated. “Pana, Aryl?”

“No.” She snorted with exasperation. “That’s Pana.” A stab of her finger. “Amna.” Aryl turned and pointed again. “Rayna, Vyna.” She continued to turn and point, “Grona.” Back almost to Pana. “Tuana.” Then, with an ache in her heart, she faced home. “Yena. I’m from Yena. There.”

The strangers appeared paralyzed, as if she’d grown another head.

“What’s wrong?” she asked finally. Had they no idea of the shape of the world?

“Vy, Ray, So, Gro, Ne, Tua, Ye, Pa, Am,” Marcus said, quickly and easily, for some reason dropping the final half of each clan name while keeping them in order by place and adding two of his words. He was smiling, not at her, but at the other strangers. He continued, his voice growing stronger. “Nor, Xro, Fa.” More words she didn’t know.

“Vy-NA, Ray-NA!” this a triumphant bellow from the Carasian. Even Pilip appeared cheerful for once, its twig fingers wiggling in the air and eyes bright.

She must have shown her bewilderment, for when Marcus looked at her, his smile faded. “Sorry, am. You don’t understand. Seekers, we. Seek these words: Vy-na, Ray-na, all. Thank you.” He made the gesture of gratitude, imperfectly, but close enough. “Thank you.”

If they were sane, something on which she reserved judgment, then they had found something in the clan names of greater meaning than an Om’ray knew. But if Cersi wasn’t their world—Aryl shivered despite her new, warm stranger-shirt—how could that be?

“What is?” Pilip indicated its panel. Marcus, after giving Aryl a worried look, went back to his.

“Aryl?”

Feeling numb, she looked at a closer image of the Oud shore. The device had found a tall narrow building of stone, a tower, with still-dark earth piled haphazardly around its base as though it had thrust through the soil overnight. Light glinted at her from the upper level. Windows like the strangers? “Looks like yours,” she commented.

“No.” The image slid along the coast. There were more of the towers. Many more. “What is?”

Not theirs? “Oud,” she guessed. She could only imagine one reason for new towers with windows overlooking the Lake of Fire. “To watch you.”

“These also watch.” Janex said something to Pilip and the image flickered, then changed to show the lush growth of a more familiar shore.

“Tikitik,” Aryl identified, nodding to herself. Osst grazed in the shallows. Tall figures moved among the shadowy buttresses. “They’re waiting for me. I have to go back.” She indicated herself, then that shore.

“No!” Marcus looked shocked and said several things in his words before catching himself. “Saw, Aryl. Look!” He did something to switch the image. It became a strangely lit vision of the osst struggling in its pool of blood, her clinging to the gourds. Her mouth was wide open; she hadn’t remembered screaming.

Aryl closed her eyes, waving at him to get rid of it.

“Back, no,” he said firmly. “Aryl, stay. Safe.”

Stay?

She looked at the Om’ray-who-wasn’t, this Marcus Bowman, and took a deep, steadying breath. Kindness or suspicion or something unique to Humans? Any created a problem she hadn’t anticipated. Thought Traveler wouldn’t wait forever. Tikitik plotted and planned—she’d seen that for herself. Traveler would have seen her rescued by the strangers. That was part of its plan, but the longer they delayed her return, the more likely it was the Tikitik would realize she’d managed to communicate with them—that Aryl herself was now part of whatever game they were playing.

It wasn’t, she told herself with significant pity, at all fair.

Before she could think of an argument, Marcus spoke again, this almost a whisper. “Aryl. Look.”

What now? She turned to the panel, already hating the thing.

Another view of the past. She and Joyn, on the sun-kissed branch, launching their fiches into the open air. They looked almost in the sky themselves, she thought longingly.

That image flickered into another. Aryl held herself still as the machine showed her its version of the worst moment of her life. The wings in the M’hir, beautiful and wild; the webbing and its riders, the flash of arm and hook. She was there, holding to newly-bare stalks, staring up with wonder in her face.

Costa. There was Costa . . . with her.

A blur of black and white as the wastryls attacked . . . a brilliance that overwhelmed the panel and made her flinch . . .

Then nothing at all.

“They fell,” Aryl finished, because they had no way to see what she could, and always would, see. “They fell with the wreckage of your device, burning, impaled on stalks. The luckiest died on the way down. The rest fell into the waters of the Lay and were eaten alive. My brother—” Her hands flattened over the blank panel, obscuring it. “We lost those we loved.” Her eyes found Marcus. “Can you understand me?” Could he? “You harmed Yena. My people may all die because of your machine. Was it worth it, Seeker? Did you find what you were after?”

The Human’s soft hand reached toward her face. Aryl drew slightly away, then stopped to permit the touch, let it brush her wet cheek. As she held his brown, too-normal eyes with hers, she willed him to understand, to move past the barrier of words despite his solitary mind. She didn’t use Power, not deliberately, hoping there was something else in her that could reach him through that fleeting contact of finger to tear.

Marcus paled, his eyes dilated despite the bright sun pouring through the clouds. “Sorry,” he said after a moment, his throat working. More of his words, replies from Janex, Pilip. She let them talk, waiting. Then, “Sorry, all. No harm mean. Accident. Aryl, safe. Please.”

If words were all they had, Aryl thought, these were good ones. Point of fact, she doubted these three would swat a biter. Well, maybe the other two would, after arguing the matter, but not Marcus. She’d felt his thoughts, even if she hadn’t understood them. There’d been compassion as well as curiosity.

“Why did you send your machine to the Harvest?” Aryl asked then. “What do you seek?”

Marcus nodded back. “See!”

Not the panel, she complained to herself.

It wasn’t. Instead, Marcus asked something of Pilip and the circle on which they all stood startled her by turning underfoot. It came to a smooth stop once Aryl and Marcus were opposite the still-hovering device.

As if that had been a signal, the device plunged into the water. Startled, she leaned forward to watch the splash settle into froth. The others didn’t appear worried.

Once the ripples calmed, the Lake of Fire’s clear water allowed her to follow the descent to the limit of sunlight. She thought she’d lose the device there, but it began to give off its own light. She watched that light grow smaller and smaller with every heartbeat, like a fich tossed from the top of a rastis.

No rastis was this tall, she reminded herself, wondering what that meant about the depths beneath this platform.

“See what is,” Janex offered. “Here.”

It could still send an image? Of course. That smooth clear casing protected it. Aryl joined Marcus in front of the panel, this time eagerly.

What was the underwater world like? At first, she was disappointed. The panel’s image had a lot in common with a mist-bound window at home, revealing nothing but diffused light. It could have been worse, she consoled herself. The Tikitik put their dead into the lake—what if their bodies were floating around, uneaten?

“Is there nothing alive?” she asked, after a moment more of this.

The Carasian had left its panel to stand behind her. “Life, no,” it rumbled. “Wait.”

Wait? For what? Aryl eased her weight from one foot to the other, impatient with standing still.

When the image changed, she froze. “What is that?” “That” was a curved shape, touched into reality by the device’s light. The curve led to another, and another. A straight line crossed behind. Another, no, three more, rose behind that. More shapes, all perfect, free of silt or debris, extending in every direction. At this improbable depth, beyond sunlight, the still-clear water of the Lake of Fire revealed its secret.

Aryl had lived her life high in the canopy. She understood the tricks perspective could play with the eye and realized at once what she saw was immense.

And what she saw had been made.

“Who built this?” she demanded, wrenching her eyes away. “You?”

“No.” Marcus gazed at the panel. His hand hovered nearby, as if wanting to stroke what it showed. “Old, this. Oldest.”

“Who would live underwater?”

“Lake, new,” stated Pilip. She hadn’t noticed the Trant nearby until it spoke. “Land, once.”

Aryl started to laugh, then realized the strangers were serious. For all their amazing devices, perhaps they were not well educated. “The world is as it has always been,” she informed them. “The Agreement means it cannot change.”

Marcus frowned at her. “Worlds, change always.”

Not world. Worlds.

It was true, then, she thought, feeling as though the strangers’ solid platform moved with the water after all.

“ ‘Agreement.’ What is?” This from Janex.

Those from other worlds—if she let herself believe, for now, in other worlds—were patently outside the Agreement, which named only the three races of this one. “Tikitik, Oud, and Om’ray share the world,” she explained, as much to herself as them. “This world. Cersi. That is the Agreement.”

“Cersi, yes.” A claw brushed by her to point at the panel. The device was now moving sideways, sending images of more underwater buildings, each complex, strange, and flawless. “First, them. Seek, we. What was.”

“Cersi, Vy, Ray, Tua, Ye, Pa, Am.” Marcus tapped the panel. “Words, theirs.”

The existence of other worlds, places that might be real despite having no Om’ray, was suddenly the easiest part to believe. A lake—she looked out over the vastness of the Lake of Fire to remind herself—a lake that hadn’t always been? Aryl groped her way around the concept. It was true that the waters of the Lay rose and fell with the seasons. Puddles formed and dried with each rain. She found she could imagine, though with difficulty, a lake this vast not always being here.

As for the buildings—anyone so foolish as to build on the ground risked losing their homes to flood, not to mention the swarms within. Yena knew better. So she could imagine such a disaster befalling these buildings.

Thought Traveler had talked of “before.” Was this what it had meant?

Aryl could imagine all this. But that these strangers could know words used by whoever had lived down there, be they Tikitik, Oud, or Om’ray? And that those words resembled the names of Om’ray clans?

Her skepticism must have shown in a way Marcus could read. “Hoveny Concentrix,” he said to her, saying the new words slowly and clearly. “Know this?”

“No.”

“Hoveny old, their worlds—” he indicated Janex and Pilip, “—old, many worlds. Triads, seekers are.” His inability to communicate more fully frustrated him. She could see it in his face.

That was fine; what little she grasped frustrated her. She felt as if she tried to see something hidden behind too many leaves. Aryl pointed to the image. “Hoveny made this?”

“Proof, no,” this from Pilip. Its fingers tapped against one another. “Hope, maybe.”

Marcus scowled, launching into something long and passionate in their words. Aryl didn’t have to understand to know he defended a position against the Trant. She looked to Janex, who’d been silent longer than usual.

The Carasian’s eyes settled on her. “Come Cersi, hope is.” A pause. “Many Triads seek. Many worlds, hope is. Proof?” Clawtips closed, the barest distance from touching. “So. Words, few. Buildings, less. Hoveny Concentrix, important is. Seekers long, we.”

Why? Aryl wanted to know. Who had these Hoveny been? People like the strangers—people like herself?

Why were they gone?

They’d probably broken an Agreement of their own, she decided grimly. It seemed all too easy to do.

These were matters for Adepts. She’d go home and gratefully give it to her mother and the Council. Costa’s plants would need watering by now. These strangers were interesting but obviously harmless. Let them stare into the water for the rest of their lives.

She was done.

“Take me back,” Aryl ordered, pointing to shore.

Aryl sat at the top of the strangers’ metal tower, back against a support, and kicked her feet back and forth, back and forth. She couldn’t wait to argue with people who could argue back.

Not that the strangers couldn’t communicate. Oh, they understood exactly what she’d wanted—to be returned to shore and the waiting Tikitik. They didn’t care. They had more questions for her. Many more.

When it became plain she was their captive—well fed and treated—but a captive nonetheless, Aryl had left the pointless debate to climb their tower.

From here, the strangers’ floating camp was a small cube of white beneath her. She’d ignored their shouts and pleas; none of them could, it seemed, climb after her. They’d sent their device—or its twin—to spy on her. Though tempted to stick out her tongue, Aryl ignored it, too. They’d taken it away, doubtless to seek more interesting images.

She admired the view. From this vantage, the Lake of Fire stretched in all directions. Behind the gathering cloud—it would rain soon—the sun was on its way to Grona. The flat land of the Oud, stretching across Pana and Tuana, disturbed her, so she faced Yena, imagining herself closer than she was.

One moment the air was heavy, but dry; the next, it filled with rain. She’d never get used to the suddenness of it, Aryl thought. She pulled the loose shirt over her head, drew her knees inside the same shelter. No reason to climb down. She’d been wet before; there were no biters. Lightning was the only risk, and there was no sign of it, or thunder.

She needed time away from their questions and contradictions.

Time, she admitted to herself, to recover her balance, badly shaken by their claims of other worlds and long forgotten races. She’d let herself grow comfortable with them; in return, they’d threatened the foundations of her understanding.

Aryl let her inner sense expand outward, reestablishing the world she knew as real. No need for machine “eyes.” No need for searching or questions. That which was Om’ray surrounded her—was her. She relaxed, having found her place.

She dared reach farther. Yena was a tight glow; all were home and safe. There were a few solitary sparks toward Amna and Pana—newly on Passage, she thought, feeling for those lonely travelers. She’d never think of them as strangers again. No Om’ray could be. Not like the three below.

They were trouble. What they’d found was worse. Aryl didn’t need the wisdom of Council to know that. The Tikitik gave their dead to the Lake of Fire; they used it to punish their failures. They were concerned—or whatever word applied—by the presence of the strangers here. Enough to enlist her to learn more.

The Oud’s new towers? No coincidence. Their teaching these strangers real words was a deliberate act. They had an interest here as well.

Making her wonder what the Tikitik and Oud knew about what lay below the surface.

Her hair dripped; the shirt had soaked through. Resigned to such minor discomfort, Aryl locked her legs around the rounded metal beam. A Yena could sleep thus. She should stay up here until she starved to death, she thought morosely. Leave the strangers a corpse dangling overhead to remind them not to meddle in the affairs of her world.

She gave a bitter laugh. The only problem with that plan? Unless it possessed incredible eyesight, Thought Traveler wouldn’t know it was her corpse. The Tikitik would continue to believe his Yena “scout” wasn’t coming back for some other, more sinister reason.

And the strangers wouldn’t take her back. Even if she could swim, Aryl shuddered, she wouldn’t dare—not in these waters.

Which left her sitting atop their mysterious tower. Its purpose eluded her. They didn’t need it as a lookout. It was topped with a small ball of the white material they were so fond of using. She’d dismissed the tempting notion of trying to pull it off; it was never wise to disturb a nest when you didn’t know what might be home.

The other was something else she chose not to disturb. Taisal had shown she could reach her at will. Until Aryl had something worth saying, she was happier out of that ominous darkness.

Something moved through the rain.

Aryl lunged to her feet, putting the tower’s struts between herself and the approaching dark shape. It was larger than she was, larger than the strangers’ flying machine, and made no sound other than the tinny pound of rain against it. She relaxed slightly at that, realizing the rain must be striking an artificial surface, not a living one, then tensed as whatever it was moved closer and closer.

It touched the tower, metal claws grabbing a crossbeam to hold it in place. She blinked away rain, trying to see it better. Was this Oud?

Light cracked along a horizontal seam. The upper half lifted straight up to become a roof protecting those inside. Not Oud.

More strangers.

Aryl counted four: three seated and one standing to stare at her. That one looked like a giant wingless flitter, with plumes covering its body and an immense green eye on either side of its head. Its mouth was more like a stitler’s, bony and pointed. If she’d met it in the canopy, she’d have climbed out of reach. Quickly.

Now? Aryl instinctively glanced up for an escape route, hand over her mouth to breathe through the heavy rain, then looked down. The tower’s metal would be as treacherous as a wet branch. There was nowhere to go.

One of those seated came to join the flitter-stranger. Another Om’ray-who-wasn’t, like Marcus, equally not-there to Aryl’s sense. Another Human. This one shouted something. She couldn’t make out words over the rain. He beckoned impatiently to her.

New strangers. A new, more elaborate flying machine.

Aryl eased herself through the tower to the side of the machine and climbed inside, avoiding the hands that reached out for her.

Maybe, she told herself, shivering for the first time, they’d come to take her back.

The machine closed its protective cover and began to move.

Interlude

ENRIS TOSSED A STONE. Iglies skittered from his path, flashing alarm, only to turn and lurk in the shadows that fringed the tunnel. They watched him with a bold, disquieting interest he’d never seen before.

He’d never seen a tunnel like this either—the floor rough and loose and glowstrips hanging from occasional supports. It looked unfinished, as if freshly dug. He dropped his pack in a brighter area than most and eased himself down, hissing between his teeth. The iglies made their wet-smack noises, as if agreeing with his bruises and aching rib. Ignoring them all, he took a deliberate sip from his flask, then resealed it. There’d been none of the Oud water taps, or even a puddle, for the last few tenths. Best not to assume he’d find more water soon.

Had he made a mistake, taking whatever turn went most directly toward Vyna? It had seemed easy, at first. He’d ignored tunnels with upward slopes, gambling on another stretch free of Oud, willing to go deeper to elude anything more dangerous than iglies. He’d made reasonable time, despite a limp and the need to rest more and more often. The bleeding had stopped. He was safe. Wasn’t he?

Not if this tunnel was about to be reshaped. All Enris had to go on were runner stories—and who knew what to believe from them? He’d always heard the Oud left behind their technology, simply shutting off power before destroying what was there. What if the runners were wrong, and some tunnels were stripped by the Oud first, lights left on so they could do whatever they did to collapse ceilings and move walls . . . ?

He got up, doing his utmost not to feel the press of earth above him. There was no room to panic, not down here. “One step at a time,” Enris told himself, his voice startling the iglies to flight. “One step.”

It was several steps later when he thought he heard something moving behind him, something much larger than an iglie. When he turned to look back, all he saw was empty floor, scattered with stone and shadow. “Bad as Yuhas,” Enris muttered to himself, almost wishing the other—and his broom—were nearby.

Almost. He was alone and hoped to stay that way. The jitters were normal. He picked up his pace as best he could on the uneven footing, searching ahead for any sign of an intersecting tunnel, preferably one leading above ground. Down here too long, Enris decided, if he was hearing things.

Another sound, not imagined. As he looked over his shoulder, he realized with dismay the strange clattering wasn’t coming from behind him at all. It was coming from above his head.

Enris looked up and found himself staring at an Oud.

Despite its bulk, the creature looked quite at home. It ignored him, busy doing something to the ceiling of the tunnel. Enris took a few slow, careful steps to move from directly beneath it. He could smell it now, that mix of old oil and dust. Unlike the ones who visited Tuana, this wore no clothing. The revealed body was faintly ribbed down its entire soft length, with patches of darker pigment where a spine might be.

It moved abruptly and he backed another step, but the Oud had merely gone forward to a new patch of ceiling. Where it had been was now smooth, any imperfections in the stone polished away. The clattering noise continued. It was, he realized with amazement, trimming the rock away with its appendages. Somehow, the creature must collect any dust or fragments inside its body, for nothing fell loose.

Om’ray had wondered what machines the Oud employed to build their maze of tunnels. Was this at least part of the answer: that they used their own bodies? He wished he could tell his family, his Clan.

They wouldn’t listen to him. Once on Passage, an unChosen couldn’t be welcomed back by his own.

The creature went about its business, either oblivious to him, or respectful of the token he carried. Enris gave it one last look, then kept walking.

He encountered more and more Chewer Oud, as he came to call them. All were busy nibbling away the roughness of ceiling, walls, and floor; none reacted to his presence in any way he could tell. After a while, Enris ignored them, too, walking around those who blocked his path as he sought an exit.

So he was astonished when he went around the next turn in the tunnel to have one pour itself from the ceiling to confront him.

“Where is?” it demanded, rearing up to expose its talking appendages.

Thinking it meant the token, he reached for the disk, only then noticing this wasn’t like the other Oud—its body was draped in fabric.

And if an Oud could be familiar, he had a horrible feeling this one was. “Where is what?” Enris replied, hoping he was wrong.

“Metalworker, is.”

Not wrong. Somehow, the same Oud had found him. Enris swallowed, wishing he wasn’t tired and sore. Better still, to be clever. Or brave. The truth was all he dared. “I’m not a metalworker now. I’m on Passage. The device is still in Tuana, with the other metalworker.”

“Best are,” it said, rearing higher. The clattering sounds from other Oud nearby paused, as if they eavesdropped. “We decide other!”

“My father is the best,” he said, desperate to calm the creature. “Om’ray go on Passage when Council decides, not Oud. That’s the Agreement. It’s my turn. You must let me pass.”

“Badbadbadbad.”

He couldn’t argue with it there. “Please. Let me leave.”

It loomed over him; Enris didn’t dare move back. “Strangers and Om’ray, together, are,” it said, clearly upset. “Badbadbadbad.”

All he asked was sense from the thing. Was that too much? “I don’t understand,” Enris said. Strangers? “What strangers?” he demanded. “The unChosen?” The two from Yena, Yuhas and the quieter Tyko? Was that what disturbed it? Unfamiliar Om’ray?

“Not Om’ray. Strangers. Strangers! Want device. Where is?” The Oud reared violently, bashing into a support. The wood groaned and a glowstrip attached at one end fell to the floor, its light extinguished. “Where is!? Where is!!?? Find it NOW!!!”

Terrified for his father—for his Clan, if the Oud went to Tuana in this state—Enris took off his pack and dumped its contents on the tunnel floor. “See? I don’t have it!” he shouted desperately. “You didn’t tell me I had to keep it. You told me to find out what it is! I did. Do you hear me. I know what it is.”

Mid-rear, the Oud paused, its many limbs folding together.

Enris hoped this was an improvement. “It holds voices,” he said. “There were words in it. Sounds an Om’ray can sense inside. Do you understand me?”

It lowered itself slightly. “Our words?”

He froze.

“Our words?” the Oud persisted, as if devices to hold voices were normal, as if his ability—an Om’ray’s ability—to somehow hear those voices had been expected.

Why else, Enris thought suddenly, bring the device to him? “You knew what it was. You knew—” He caught himself, unsure why he didn’t want to suggest the device was Om’ray. Maybe it was his growing suspicion that this Oud had tried, somehow, to use its own version of Power and failed, that its attempt had left that disorienting trace. “How did you know I could use it?” he asked instead.

“Probable. Possible. Maybe. Metalworker, start. Skills, some.” It tapped impatiently. “Answer! Our words? Other? Answer!”

Enris slowly bent down and began repacking his bag. The Oud leaned over, as if attracted by his movements. He tried not to shake. “Let me leave,” he said, standing again. “And I’ll tell you.”

“Yesyesyesyes!”

“I don’t know about other words,” he said, choosing his with care, “but what I ‘heard’ didn’t sound right. I couldn’t understand any of it.”

“Other words.” He could swear it sounded smug. “Other words.” Then, too quickly to avoid, the Oud lunged forward to tear the disk from his tunic. “Leave now.”

“How?” he protested. “Give that back!”

“Find, no.” Its many small limbs quickly ferried the small thing out of sight below its body. “Mine now.”

What was it talking about? The token?

Or him?