It was the first sending Yuhas had tried with him. Faint—he wasn’t Powerful—but characteristically warm and generous. Enris had to smile. “That I have,” he said aloud. “But—” his smile faded “—trust me when I say that’s not what she wants.”
As surely as he knew how to work the Oud’s metal, Enris knew Naryn S’udlaat was drawn to his Power, not him. Worse, her ambition had nothing to do with the making of useful, beautiful objects, or even friendship. There would be nothing of him left in Enris sud S’udlaat.
He wouldn’t risk it, despite the helpless desire that grew each time she came near.
“I’ll take this inside,” Yuhas offered.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Enris gently but firmly shouldered the other Om’ray from the cart. “Do me a favor. Go tell her how wonderful your Chosen is—that should send her running for the Cloisters.” No secret that Caynen S’udlaat, Naryn’s cousin, hadn’t been expected to catch the eye of the exotic, handsome stranger in their midst. But it was a good match, Enris thought, happy for his friend. There was no hiding the contentment the two had found in each other. Tunnels or no, Yuhas would be fine.
“Naryn!” Yuhas called, easily outstepping the cart. Despite the new boots, his every move made Enris feel clumsy and slow. He did his best not to grin at Naryn’s suddenly fixed expression at Yuhas’ babble as he pushed the cart past her to the shop. She was obliged to listen politely to Yuhas—Chosen were adult, after all, however new that state—but she didn’t have to like it. That much was clear from the glare she sent his way.
Enris smiled.
Jorg was inside. He waved an absent greeting to his son as he swung open the vat, eyes assessing the cart’s load as Enris pushed it through the wide door. No doubt Jorg knew to the blade how many they could pour this morning.
Enris was a step inside, about to start the cart down the ramp to the vat when a hand clamped over his bare wrist.
ENRIS!
The sending struck like a blow. He staggered back into the door’s frame, the cart tipping its load over the ramp with a resounding clatter. He could hear his father’s running steps. Yuhas was shouting. Louder by far was the voice in his mind.
ENRIS!! COME! COMECOMECOME!!!
The summons beat against him. He couldn’t see, could barely remember to gasp for air. He had no strength to pull free of the now-light grip. Instinct made him throw his free arm over his head for protection. Useless. This attack came from within, but his shields were useless, too. All he could do was resist. At that resistance, the summons turned to pain . . . waves and waves of PAIN . . . He heard a scream . . .
“Enris!? What’s wrong?” His father. “What are you doing to him?” This a shout. “Stop!”
Somehow, he began to force the other out, to wrest control of his senses from her—for it was her.
“Nar—Naryn—” he managed to whisper.
She was pulling him. As he struggled, a darkness rose behind his eyes, a churning emptiness that sang with delirious joy and fear. It seemed a place, somewhere he could be safe . . . if he only let himself fall apart, the pieces would flow there . . .
PAINPAINPAIN—!
As suddenly as if cut by a knife, the pain and pull were gone. Enris found himself slumped against the wall, breathing in great sobbing heaves as though he’d raced uphill with his cart. His hands . . . he stared at his hands. They couldn’t be his. His hands had never trembled before. “What . . .?”
“Yuhas threw her into the street. The Adepts are coming, my son. Stay here. Listen to me. Stay here.”
I’ll never leave. He tried to say it, tried to send it, but the darkness was coming back.
This time, he fell.
“You’re to leave, Enris Mendolar.”
He struggled to sit up in an unfamiliar bed, pulling at the constriction of a strange shirt around his shoulders. “Why?” He fought to see through the dark.
“You’re to leave. When you are ready. Which won’t be today.”
Sleep.
It was a command.
“I want to see my family.” Enris reared up in the bed, tossing the blanket aside. “I want to see them now!”
The Om’ray with the tray didn’t react. He said, as he had said for the last two meals Enris had been served, exactly and with each syllable the same: “Here is food. Eat what you wish.”
One of the Lost.
Enris rubbed one hand over his face, feeling a fool. He pressed two fingers into the corners of his eyes, hard against his nose. There was pain still. Not overwhelming. Not even real.
Not his. Imposed. How had she done it?
“Here is food. Eat what you wish.”
He sighed and dropped his hand in order to take the tray. Otherwise, the Lost would continue to repeat his message, over and over.
He knew the face. This had been Sive sud Lorimar. A harvester. A friend of his father’s. With the death of his Chosen, he’d been brought here. To stay.
The Cloisters. Enris shuddered inwardly as he watched the Lost walk from the room. He’d wanted, once, to explore this place—see its ancient metalwork for himself, explore the many mysteries supposedly hidden behind its bold arches and smooth walls.
Now, he wanted home. He stared helplessly at his impeccable meal and wanted Ridersel’s sweetpies.
The voice had said he had to leave.
Had he left already?
Was this his destination?
It could be. His thoughts felt thick, unsettled, more so than the disorientation left by the Oud trace. The Cloisters was the refuge of those too mind-damaged to live with the rest of Tuana.
Naryn’s gift.
Enris threw the tray and its contents against the far wall.
Chapter 19
“IS THERE SOMETHING YOU NEED?”
Aryl kept her eyes on her hands, trying to ignore that her hands gripped a shoulder-high leather-wrapped post, and that post was embedded into the back of ...
... impossible to ignore sitting on top of a room-sized mass that grunted and stank and ate its way over a world that . . .
She squeezed her eyes shut in denial. “What I need,” she said bitterly, “is for the edge of the sky to stop moving.”
“It’s called the horizon. It isn’t moving. You are. The feeling will pass.”
Her stomach didn’t care about the distinction. The Tikitik and their beasts had taken her from the rastis grove to where the rain no longer fell as it properly should—deflecting in all directions from the tips of leaves and fronds, half mist, half heavy drops—but instead hammered straight down as if she’d stood under the cistern’s open tap. Every identical drop stung exposed skin. She’d had to bend over, her head between her arms, simply not to drown.
Almost worse, the terrifying rain had ended as no rain ever had: quickly, as if shut off from above. She’d opened her eyes in shock to find herself in a place she’d never imagined could exist. It had taken until now for her curiosity to outweigh the nausea.
Aryl eased open her eyelids.
The sky she knew. She’d seen its ripped blue amid the clouds before. But the land beneath had been erased by a smooth flat sheet of water.
Not the black water of the Lay, though some of that churned around the feet of their mounts as they lumbered through the plant-thick shallows, grunting to themselves. This expanse was the color of her grandmother’s failed eyes, a soft gray that no longer remembered blue. Nothing disturbed it beyond the ripples and silt of their passing. It stretched to meet the sky in a straight line, like the end of the world.
It wasn’t. Though Yena grew dimmer to her with every step, Amna and Rayna, distant Vyna, grew brighter. No wonder so few arrived on Passage at Yena. Aryl couldn’t imagine how long it would take to skirt this all-wet place.