Tiny tentacles wiggled on red jowls. A fat, leprous figure, twice as bulky as the rest and with a hide like Nink’s, stood behind them all, grunting gutturally.
Adari screamed—but they weren’t listening. They were all around her now, man, woman, and monster, shouting gibberish. She mashed her hands to her ears.
It did no good. The words were digging past her ears.
Digging at her mind.
Mental pinpricks became knives. Adari reeled. The strangers surged forward physically and ethereally—pushing, scraping, searching. Waves of images flashed before her, of her sons, her house, her people—every-thing that was Adari, everything that was Kesh. She still saw mouths moving, but the cacophony now boomed inside her head. Words, meaningless words . . .
. . . that somehow began connecting with familiar impressions. As with the breeze before, the voices were alien, but she could feel the sounds coalescing around rational thoughts.
“You are here.”
“There are others. There are others.”
“Bring them here.”
“Take us there!”
“Bring them here!”
Adari spun, or all of Kesh did. Above her, the group parted for a new arrival. It was a woman. Darker-skinned than the others, she held a baby tightly swad-dled in a red cloth. Mother,Adari thought against the clamorous assault. A sign of hope. Mercy.
“BRING THEM HERE BRING THEM HERE
BRING THEM HERE!”
Adari screamed, writhing against the unseen claws raking at her. The others were holding back. The mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
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woman above was not. Adari reeled. She thought she saw the veined wings of Nink, flying overhead and away.
A hand appeared on the mother’s shoulder from behind, drawing her back. The din faded from Adari’s mind. She looked up to see— Zhari Vaal?
No, she realized, as her teary eyes focused. Another of the strangely clad figures, but short and stocky like her husband. She had once imagined Zhari at the bottom of the sea, his rich mauve color drained. This man was paler still, but his dark shock of hair and reddish brown eyes gave him a confident, compelling look. She had seen him before, on the mountain. She had heard him before, on the wind.
“Korsin,”he said, simultaneously in her mind and with a voice as soothing as her grandfather’s. He gestured to himself. “I am called Korsin.”
Blackness closed around her.
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Chapter Three
On her third day among the newcomers, Adari learned to talk.
She’d spent the first full day after the terrifying encounter asleep, if that was the right term for a fever-ish, nightmare slumber interrupted by brief patches of delirium. Several times, she’d opened her eyes only to shut them quickly on seeing the strangers hovering around her.
But they were tending to her, not harassing her—as she’d found the second morning, awakening between an impossibly soft blanket and the rough ground. The newcomers had found a secluded dry spot for her, with several figures sitting vigil. Adari had drunk the water they offered, but it didn’t restore her voice. Her head still rang, her mind bruised by the earlier assault. None of her vocabulary came when called. She had forgotten how to speak.
Korsin was sitting with her when she finally remembered. He’d called over Hestus, a rust-colored figure with a shining mask covering part of his acid-scarred face. It almost looked like it was part ofhis face—various bits hiding under his skin. Adari had flinched in fear, but Hestus had simply sat calmly, listening as Korsin tried to talk with her.
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And they talked. Awkwardly, at first, with Hestus piping in occasionally to repeat a new Keshiri word she had said, followed by his own language’s equivalent.
Adari had marveled. The Keshiri words Hestus spoke sounded exactly like what she’d said—in her own voice, even. Korsin had explained that Hestus’s “special ear” gave him that talent, helping to speed along the exchange of information.
Adari was interested in that exchange, but most of the information had gone the other way. She gathered that the people Korsin led had indeed come from the silver shell, and that it had somehow fallen from the sky. It was also clear that, powerful as they were, they had no means of leaving the mountain now, isolated as it was by water and forbidding terrain. Korsin had listened with interest as she spoke about Kesh and the Keshiri, of uvak and villages on the mainland. She’d mentioned the Skyborn only once, before stopping in near embarrassment. She didn’t know who the newcomers were, but she felt abashed bringing it up.
Now, on the third afternoon since her arrival, Adari was speaking comfortably with the newcomers—and had even picked up some words in their language herself. They were something called “Sith,” and Korsin was “human.” She repeated the words. “You’re a good listener,” Korsin said, encouraged. He said others had worked with her as she slept—he did not say how—to try to improve communications. Now they were pro-gressing quickly, and it was not all their doing. Even overwrought, Adari remained sharp.
“Our immediate concern, Adari Vaal,” Korsin said, emptying a glistening pouch of powder into a cup for her, “must be to reach the mainland.” There wasn’t food or shelter enough for his people here, and the mountain had sheer drop-offs to the sea below. Her uvak might have provided an exit for someone, but mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1
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Nink, as fearful of the newcomers as he was of the mountain’s native wildlife, had spent the last few days far out of reach, above.
Drinking the broth—it was filling, not unlike her mother’s stew, she thought—Adari wrestled with the problem.
Nink mightcome when she called, but only if she was standing in the open, alone. She could fly to land and return with help. “I couldn’t take any riders, though.”
Nink might not appear if she was accompanied, and a novice rider could never carry a passenger in any event.
“I’d have to go alone. But I’d return as soon as I could.”
“She will not!”
Adari knew the voice before she even looked up. The screamer.The mother of the small child charged toward the smoldering campfire. “She will abandon us!”
Korsin rose and took the woman aside. Adari heard heated words exchanged, unfamiliar ones. But in bidding the woman away, he spoke words Adari did recognize: “We are her deliverance, and she is ours.”
Adari watched the woman, still glaring at her from afar. “She doesn’t like me.”
“Seelah?” Korsin shrugged. “She’s concerned over her mate—lost from the crash site. And with a child, she’s anxious to leave this mountain.” He smiled, offering to help Adari stand. “As a mother, I’m sure you understand.”
Adari gulped. She hadn’t mentioned her children.