Rift in the Sky (39 page)

“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.

Still on her back.

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.”

Explaining the sore head.

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.”

Oran. The Healer?

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.

The steady light from the ceiling strip shone on their home.

“What have you done?” she demanded as she grabbed clothes and began to dress.

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

She froze, her head halfway through the neck of her tunic. “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?”

His shields locked tight.

Not good. Not good at all. “Enris?”

“We've done all we can—”

Worse. “Where is he?”

“I'll take you.” He gathered her close again, this time gently, and . . .

... they were outside.

Outside?

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.

She was still unconscious, Aryl thought numbly. This couldn't be real.

“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.

“Why did you bring me here? Where's Marcus?”

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—

“Aryl!”

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

“Wait!”

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.

Like their first shelter at Sona, when they'd had nothing.

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.

“What have you told her?” Naryn demanded.

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.

“Are you all . . . right?” the Human asked. “They told . . . me you . . . were hurt.”

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.”

Yao gave Aryl a too-adult look, but disappeared obediently.

“What do you mean ‘tried'?” Aryl asked.

Sian.
Healing won't work, Aryl. Nothing does.
With
compassion.

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.

The mindcrawler.

Aryl sat on the bed and put her hand close to, but not touching, the Human's.

Aryl?
Caution, no more, from Enris.

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.

Words. None of it helped. None of it mattered.

But his eyes brightened at her agreement, just a bit. Which did.

Aryl leaned closer. “Marcus, let me try to help you. Please.”

“Problem is me,” he replied. “My fault . . . this, too.”

“No. None of it.”

“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.
”

Aryl frowned. What was he saying? He had no Power.

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?”

Enris leaned over her shoulder. “Made a mess,” he added. “You know Yena.”

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

Now, she urged him silently. While trust was greater than fear.

As if he'd heard, Marcus shifted his hand until their fingertips met.

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.

... Something.

There. Aryl didn't
reach.
She paid
attention
.

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.

More.

Her breathing wanted to flutter like his; she
moved
somewhere else.

Here!

Discord! NOISE!
Every biter in the canopy, buzzing in her head at once.

It wasn't sound at all.

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.

Not-
real
. And not-Marcus either.

Tracks in moss. V-shaped ripples in a stream.

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.

Or did they spread because she
looked
? Is this what Sian meant?

She
backed
away.