Aryl looked up. From this distance, the shapes clinging to the massive rock face behind the Cloisters appeared small and insignificant. Fronds, opening to the sunlight. Wastryls, waiting for heat. As if they’d waited to be noticed, they began to fall toward them.
Enris gave a grim laugh. “Getting crowded, isn’t it?”
Esans. They circled overhead, descending slowly, growing larger. She counted five . . . more. They carried baskets, not that she’d thought they’d come alone.
One let out its shuddering scream, answered by another. Steady! she sent quickly to the others, driving her own fear down until she felt only calm certainty. The confrontation would be now, before they’d been able to return everyone to their Clan. There was no choice.
“They’ve come to talk to me,” she told Haxel, who gave her a stare of disbelief.
Not to drop more rock hunters? Enris asked. I’d like to be sure about that, since we’re standing out in the open.
No.
Not that they were in any sense safe.
Some of the esans tried to land in the surrounding nekis grove, but the too-slender branches and stalks cracked under their weight. They rose again, screaming, to join their more experienced fellows who hovered above the dirt to let their passengers climb out. Aryl and Enris shielded their eyes against the dust generated by the huge paired wings. Haxel squinted, as if determined to see all she could. The Oud Speaker scurried back and forth, back and forth, kicking up its own cloud, half sinking into the ground.
Clean clothes and a drink of water. Time. That above all she needed and couldn’t have. Aryl spat to clear her mouth and waited.
The esans lifted away and headed back to the cliff. Thought Travelers appeared out of the settling dust, their blue-black skins losing color with each step until they stood before her like clouds themselves.
Silence, except for the rapid clatter of the Oud’s limbs, the slither of stones across its body and cloak. The thing appeared frantic.
Sona’s neighbor.
Useless creature, Aryl thought in disgust. “Stop that!” she told it, to no effect.
A rock thudded off its back. The Oud slid to a stop and reared, facing the wrong way. After an instant’s hesitation, it bounced in place, flesh shaking, limbs loose and clicking together, each bounce turning it slightly. Until it faced her. “WHATDO-WHATDOWHATDO?”
Aryl glanced at Enris, who gave a charming shrug and dusted his hands.
One Thought Traveler pranced ahead of the rest. She didn’t have to guess which one that would be. Their “friend.” “What do you believe has happened here, Speaker?” To the Oud, not to her.
The Oud stilled. “Sona less.” Almost sullen.
“Is that so?” Two of the Tikitik’s eye cones swiveled to regard Aryl, the others remain fixed on the Oud Speaker. “Apart-from-All. Humor me. Have those with you step on the ground.”
Come, Aryl sent to the Sona waiting on the platform. They climbed down the ramp, Yena as reluctant as the Tuana.
“More!” the Oud exclaimed joyfully, then slumped. “Less than. Where rest? Balance!!! WHERE REST!??”
The other Thought Travelers stirred uneasily at this, fingers flexing, eyes turning.
We could bring out the rest of Sona, Enris suggested. Make the right number.
We don’t know it would be. And she wouldn’t risk more Om’ray on ground Oud could churn to liquid—or within reach of the too-fast Tikitik and their predatory mounts.
“ ‘Where are the rest?’ ” Thought Traveler repeated. “How can you not know? You are the ones who demand Balance, who insist on it, who trammel all those in your way to achieve your version of it.” Its head bobbed sharply up and down. “Count for yourself, fool!”
“Count one. Count one. MeMeMe. Sona Less.”
“Idiot.” With no other warning, the Tikitik lunged at the Oud, knife out. Aryl stepped in its way, hands up. “No!”
ARYL!
The Tikitik stopped in its tracks and stared down at her. “It’s insane,” it argued in a reasonable tone. “Once I kill it, they’ll send a new one to talk to us. That’s what Oud do.”
“No more,” the Oud protested weakly. “One.” It folded its speaking limbs and waited.
Waited, Aryl realized with cold settling around her heart, for them to understand. For her to hear what it said, not guess at meaning. “It’s not counting Om’ray.” Her voice came out too high and she lowered it. “It’s counting Oud. Something’s happened to them.”
An image of twisted machines and scorched buildings slipped into her mind. The Strangers.
Why would they harm Oud?
Do we know they wouldn’t? Enris replied, letting her feel his dread.
The Thought Travelers hissed to one another. One went to the hole in the ground through which the Oud had arrived and squatted. It picked up whirr/clicks, discarding some. Those it kept, it brought to its mouth protuberances, patting the body and wiggling legs thoroughly before dropping it. Why, she couldn’t guess. Enris had told them the rock hunters were a young form of Oud. Were the whirr/clicks another stage or just biters with a taste for Oud?
After the fourth, it stopped and stood. “The Oud is accurate,” it announced. “Sona’s colony has been decimated. This is the only Minded left.”
Sensing her confusion, Enris supplied another image: a naked Oud, upside down and oblivious, using its limbs to polish the rock ceiling of a tunnel. Not all think.
How many could? If most “Minded” were dead, did this make Sona Tikitik again?
Following her negotiation with them, the Oud lived at the head of the valley, under the Stranger camp. Marcus’ camp. It was steps away, behind the grove. She threw a despairing glance. The illusion still disguised the opening. What was behind it now?
Marcus?
I’ll go. He’d followed her thought.
No, Enris. She held herself in place with an effort that tore at her heart. I need you. Here.
“Then we are finished.” Thought Traveler beckoned. Before any Om’ray could move, the nearest of its companions had swarmed over the Oud, blades flashing.
The Oud Speaker died without sound. It sank down, its soft body spreading wide beneath its cloak. Green stained the hem.
“No!” Aryl drew her knife, heard the others do the same. Would they be next?
“Minded cannot make sense alone,” Thought Traveler stated in its infuriatingly superior voice. “And we have little time. The world is broken, Apart-from-All. It will not recover from the foolishness of Om’ray.”
Never appear weak or ignorant. Aryl stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You can believe we know.” It bent to the Oud corpse, ripped the Speaker’s Pendant from its torn cloak, and held the dripping object fastidiously away between clawtips. Without waiting for her answer, it flipped the pendant into the hole.
Every Tikitik turned its head to follow that motion.
“We, too, have a unique sense,” Thought Traveler continued. “The Makers’ Gift, if you like. It resides here.” Straining its neck upward until she could see the pale underside of its head, the Tikitik pressed its thumb deep into the soft tissue between its jaws.
A vulnerable spot.
It returned to its normal posture. “The Gift sings of healthy rastis, draws us home through darkness or heavy rain. The pendants, Om’ray tokens . . . all such were made from a substance that also catches our attention. We have but to listen. I assure you, we hear the pendants of Rayna, Amna, and Yena inside your Cloisters, where there should be none. If you open its doors, would I find the many missing from other Clans, where there should be Sona’s few?”