Radix

Tala would go no farther. Dai Bodatta was still down there, and she knew that if she were with him again in the planet-warmth she would leave her salt for sure. Her darktime had gotten very bad in the last year. All of her flesh had stiffened, and living had become a labor. Only her devotion to the brood kept her from crossing over to Iz. Her deep mind was needed, especially when the stonelight journey took them so close to howlies.
The chanting thinned to a hum. The rhythm of a slade-drum drew closer, and figures appeared below. Single file, a dozen voors emerged from the darkness, their cowls thrown back. A few of them were marked: frosted eyes, squamous lips, vein-netted transparent skin. But most of them were clean. The several hundred voors that had arrived with them had been long into their darktime and all had crossed over. Their bodies had been rafted and set adrift on a broad subter-ranean stream that wandered far into the earth.
As each of the remaining voors passed her, they placed two or three brood jewels in a wattled basket at her feet. With her kiutl-sharpened senses she briefly inspected each stonelight. They were the size of plums, clear-grained and glimmer-wobbling with lustrous colors: some fiery and trans-lucent, others gold-banded and misty as the gas planets. The light in them was centuries old, the trapped kha of voors that seeded these cave walls with tiny pieces of their lives—relic light moving its ancient telling through clear stone.
After the last of the stonelights had been placed in the basket and the container had been covered, tied, and passed out of the cave, two of the voors went back down the incline. They reemerged slowly, carrying Dai Bodatta, a small figure in a sheath of camlet trimmed with miniver. The bearers stopped before Tala, and she folded aside the covering and moved her gaze slowly over the black childshape within. A blue light hazed like fungus over the rough surface of the cocoon, and as she stared at it the sleepy solitude of her darktime thickened, and she heard a voice, soft as a cloud, far back in her mind: Lose the way.
She straightened with surprise and then relaxed, soft-focusing her awareness, listening for the voice of the child-image. But Dai Bodatta was silent.
She folded the opulent covering over the cocoon and watched after it as the two voors walked out through the cave mouth. She stood a moment in the dark, staring at the sky's arch: cloudswift, a gull turning on one wing, and farther out, the long silence of a wedge of birds. Thoughts nimble as static flurried across her mind: The crossing of the darktime voors should have been done elsewhere. Not this close to howlies. But why had Dai Bodatta insisted?
Tala—it's time. A tall voor, angular and shriven, stood at the cavemouth, cowl pulled back. It was Clochan, his flesh pale as moonlight.
A visceral, ungelded joy spiked through her. She loved this voor. He was fluent with both feelings and thoughts, a leader and, for her, a lover. Before, when they were standing close, contemplating the deep heart of a jewel, he had filled her with such blue-bliss that for a while she had forgotten their danger and had become a broodling again, unaware of bloodpaths or the darktime. His words still moved in her: "Three hundred years from now, someone in this cave will pick up our stonelights and know that we lived."
Let's go, Clochan called to her. We have to ride the tide.
"Soon." The sound of her voice throbbing in the dark hull of the cave startled her.
"You feel troubled?" Clochan whispered, stepping closer. His sunken eyes were watery with reflected light.
Tala discarded her feelings with a shrug of her hands. "I don't know. I haven't been able to think clearly."
Clochan put his arm around her, and she felt as light as when the full moon pulled at her blood. Today belongs to few, Clochan quoted.
"Too few," she echoed.
"The others sense no one across the bay. We have to hurry, while the way is still clear."
Lose the way, the mage's voice recurred, but she didn't project it. "I'm ready," she said.
Afternoon sunlight, clear as wine, shafted between the trees. Tala absently followed Clochan, pondering what Dai Bodatta had said. Lose the way— Give up the body? Yes, the mage is right. Her bloodpaths had narrowed, leaving her cold. Pain turned in her belly like the children she never had. Her body felt alien. Strange how these warmbloods were shaped to believe they're the exact center. Ears, eyes — all their senses— conspire to make them feel whole—replete. No wonder they're so arrogant.
A red seedcase flitted above the turf in a gusty Seabreeze, and Tala watched closely as it sailed out over the water. It had come a long way from the north and was going a long way. An Iz-sign: all life carried off by a wind that goes its own way and can never turn back.
The voors sailed in three skiffs, sliding swiftly along the tidal current among streamers of bright brown sargassum weed and sparkles of leaping needlefish. In the lead rig, Clochan knelt at the prow, surveying the bay. No other ships were in sight, and the tree-heavy isle behind them blocked the three boats from view of Laguna.
Riding in the end rig, with the camlet-wrapped cocoon, Tala watched the approaching delta. Dai Bodatta was silent, furled deep, and the only sound was the hiss of the boat slicing across the water. Tala gazed in soft focus at the ap-proaching wall of mangroves, the stumps of twisted trees, and the dunes of garbage. The gulls ringing over the refuse piles told her that there were no howlies on the beach, but a chime had begun to peal in her left ear. Always before, that had signaled danger; now, though, she wasn't sure. The darktime often filled her head with whorls of sound.
Clochan used deep mind and hand signals to guide the following skiffs through the barrier of coral heads and spikes. The churning reefwater frothed behind them and the lead boat ran in to the beach with a loud cough. Clochan and the others splashed into the shallows and carried the flyweight rig to shore. By the time the second rig slashed in, they were back in the water, lifting the wattled basket of brood jewels over their heads.
Copra husks and mangrove radicels tangled around their legs in the milky shallows. The third rig was steadied by eight voors, and Dai Bodatta was gently lifted out and carried to shore. They beached the prow and left the stern tilting and luffing in the water.
Dai Bodatta was silent, and Tala was concerned. She placed a hand beneath the cloth covering and felt the dry textured surface of the cocoon. A cold energy sang along her fingers, and a quiet voice opened within her: Lose the way.
Clochan and two others carried the first rig over the sand toward a gap in the mangroves. Four others lifted the second rig with the stonelights in it and, kicking tins and sand-clotted fruit out of their way, followed. Three went back to portage the third skiff, and Tala tightened the sheath about the mage and supervised its handling by the two remaining voors. Then, as they were stepping forward, the sand shifted beneath their feet, and the beach ahead of them roared into the sky.
An impact of heat and tearing pressure slammed Tala to the ground. Debris thudded around her, and she covered her head as another explosion screamed out of the trees. Palm fronds and a stinging rain of sand lashed her back, and she rolled toward the water. When she looked up, the beach was smoky, and the seven voors and two rigs that had been ahead of her had vanished.