“Ah. This isn’t reading, Apart-from-All. You couldn’t comprehend.”
Aryl frowned. “I’m not stupid.”
“I don’t think you are. Describe the shape of the world.”
Automatically, Aryl reached to locate her kind. She nodded to herself in satisfaction. “Amna,” she pointed, “then Rayna with Vyna beyond, Grona, Tuana, Yena, and Pana. With,” she added magnanimously, given her newfound experience, “the sky above. Amna,” this in case it lacked her sense of distance, “is beyond your Lake of Fire.”
“And beyond Amna?”
Churning darkness ... Aryl forced it away. “Beyond Amna? Nothing.”
“Interesting. I wish you could travel with me, Apart-from-All, so I could see your reaction when you learn otherwise.”
Otherwise? It tried to trick her. She deliberately ignored this, having no intention of spending more time with any Tikitik. “How do you think the sun returns to Amna each morning?”
“Perhaps it turns off its light, to sneak past us in the dark.”
“I’m not a child!”
“I meant no insult.” A pause. “Om’ray are never lost. We know this from those on Passage. You are never lost, because to you the world is not a physical landscape, but a living one. I envy you that perception, Apart-from-All, but I can’t feel it—just as you can’t feel my perception of this world, its sun, those moons and stars. I can’t help you understand. I can’t describe other worlds or their suns to you. Be content with yours. Its sun and mine will be up all too soon. Rest if you can.”
They proceeded in mutual silence for a while, except for the grunts and bellows of their mounts.
Finally, Aryl had to ask.
“If the strangers are on the lake,” she ventured, “how do I get there?”
Chapter 20
THE ANSWER TO HER QUESTION arrived with the earliest hint of dawn from Amna.
“You’re sure the osst can take me there.” Ignoring her first horizon-spanning sunrise, Aryl regarded the distant speck in the glittering water with dismay. Nothing about her mount suggested it could swim. She certainly couldn’t.
“It will manage.” In the steadily growing light, Thought Traveler appeared less and less familiar. Its mouth-fingers moved restlessly, and its small eyes divided their attention between her and the activities of its companions.
Those Tikitik were busy consolidating supplies from the gourds on their mounts into fewer. They appeared to want two emptied. The reason thus far escaped her.
She was sure she wouldn’t like it.
Aryl pushed a sweat-damp lock of hair from her eyes. The night had been warm; riding the osst, rank with sweat itself, had been like standing out in the hot sun. If it weren’t for the cloudiness of the water beside them, she’d have been sorely tempted to try and wash.
But Traveler hadn’t recommended it, this close to shore.
Where it wanted to send her—not close enough, she thought. “There has to be another way.”
“If you have a suggestion, Apart-from-All, I would be glad to hear it. The strangers pretend we aren’t here. Shouting doesn’t bring them closer. You must go to them.”
Aryl shivered. “And the osst will bring me back again?”
All the eyes turned to her. “They will return you. We’ve seen their behavior when a flitter lands on their platform. If it doesn’t leave on its own, they catch it and use their machine to fly it back to shore, unharmed.” A pause and a bark. “They don’t behave similarly with biters.”
“Who would?” she said, almost to herself. Still, Aryl perked up, things were looking better. A chance to fly in their machine—to learn how it worked?
She wondered if they’d show her how to control it. She could ask, couldn’t she?
“Here.”
All the osst grunted explosively as their riders insisted they move closer together. For the first time, Aryl saw the Tikitik use pointed sticks, applied like prods, to control their mounts. She held her nose at the result—this was not going to help her first encounter with the strangers.
“Here” referred to the pair of now-empty gourds. They were about her size. The four Tikitik stood on the wide backs of their osst, balancing without difficulty, and carried the gourds over to hers.
Confirming their climbing skills, she thought dourly.
“These go under your arms,” Traveler explained as the gourds were positioned beside her. The Tikitik, hissing unhappily to themselves, nonetheless gently rigged a harness of sorts around both gourds and her body. When her osst heaved in protest over its five passengers, it was prodded to be quiet.
Aryl, in the midst of it all, sympathized completely.
When they were done, the Tikitik returned to their mounts, leaving Aryl puzzled, her upper arms resting over the empty gourds. Her legs began to cramp.
Thought Traveler came close again. “The Lake of Fire is without life in its heart, but there are hunters where the water first deepens. You must stay on your osst there, or die.”
Aryl managed to bend her arm so her hands could grip the post. “It knows what to do?” she asked, eyeing the beast doubtfully. It hadn’t seemed overly bright to this point.
“It knows to flee.”
With that, three Tikitik gave their throbbing shriek and leaped to Aryl’s osst, plunging knives deep into its hide. As the beast bellowed in pain and lunged away, they scrambled back to safety on their own, leaving the hilts embedded amid growing patches of blood.
After that horrified look, Aryl found herself too busy to care. Her osst was heading straight out, its instinct to run from danger taking it away from its now-agitated fellows. Its powerful movements drove it through the water, deeper and deeper, water that crashed over its shoulders and into Aryl’s face.
Then, the heave and push of muscle beneath her changed to something more rhythmic and outwardly peaceful. Long hair spread out around them.
It could swim. Loud huffs of air from the osst’s dilated nostrils measured its effort. Aryl began to enjoy herself as the place of the strangers drew closer and closer. She could see details now. It was a floating platform, not that dissimilar from those in the Lay beneath the Yena meeting hall. Larger than she’d have guessed, with an entire building at one end, the other boasting a tall series of ladders joined to form a tower. There! She spotted the flying machine, then was surprised when it seemed to grow smaller.
Until she realized her osst, perhaps finally aware it had left the safety of the herd, was gradually turning around. Aryl kicked it, making no impression at all. The stupid creature began swimming toward shore with strong, methodical movements. They should have given her a stick, not tied her to gourds.
So much for the Tikitik’s plan, she thought, casting a longing look over her shoulder at the platform.
The osst shuddered, like a tree lashed by the M’hir.
Again.
It let out a piteous bellow and turned back toward the strangers. Aryl hung on, confused until she saw the stain in the water. Something—some things—were attacking the osst from below.
Another shudder, another cry. She patted it, weeping, unable to imagine anything that could save it, despairing for the first time in her life for something mute and helpless.
There was a terrible jerk. The osst screamed!
Then she was underwater.
Somehow, Aryl kept her mouth closed, remembering not to breathe until she surfaced. If she surfaced . . .
The gourds tied to her body saw to that. They popped out of the water and lay on top, with her hanging helplessly between them. Aryl gasped for air, then looked frantically for any sign that she was to be prey next.
The chill water around her was free of blood and so clear that the dawn’s light slanted down until it faded into shadow. She might have been flying in midair, instead of floating on a lake.