Rift in the Sky

Hopefully not beyond hers. Aryl took Naryn’s limp hand in hers and reached carefully, lowering her own shields. Nothing of Naryn blocked her way.

Nothing of Naryn could.

For her mind was crowded. Blurred faces, bodies pressed one to another, voices overlapping in confused shouts and whispers. Too many to count. Too many to exist. There couldn’t be this many Humans in the world, Aryl thought in horror. There wouldn’t be enough air to breathe! Not only Humans. Other kinds of faces and bodies tumbled and oozed and insisted they be remembered.

ENOUGH! Aryl shouted. Somehow, she pressed them back, sent them away! They tattered and spread apart, like spray from a waterfall, to disappear into the depths.

Until a single form remained, standing alone. Before he could turn, before she had to see him again, Aryl retreated, rebuilding her shields.

“Aryl?” Sanity in Naryn’s eyes at last. And an understandable caution.

“It’s all right.” Aryl threw her arms around her friend, who stiffened as if expecting to be thrown to the platform again by a maddened Yena. “It’s all right.” You did what I couldn’t have done, she sent. Marcus was right. Heart-kin.

Arms crept around her, tentatively squeezed back.

Sorry about the hair, Aryl added.

You should be. Naryn pushed away, but gently. “He saw beyond the mountains, Aryl. I have those memories.” She rested her hand on the crate wall. “And these.” This with innocent wonder. “The Hoveny.”

If she remembered that, but not the unsettling mass of Humans, Aryl decided, well enough. “We’re needed,” she said quietly, feeling Anaj’s emphatic agreement. “But first—” she nodded to the shelter.

“He’s gone, then.” Naryn’s hair loosened from her throat to hang in limp waves. She touched the bloodstain on Aryl’s tunic. “You didn’t kill him, heart-kin. We all did.”

Together, they went into the shelter. Aryl wrapped his few belongings in the Human’s Om’ray-shirt, and put that in his hands. All but the image disk. Answering an impulse she didn’t try to name, she tucked the device in her pocket.

Then Naryn pushed the husk of Marcus Bowman, their friend, into the M’hir.

As the blanket slumped flat, Aryl concentrated . . .

The urgency she’d sensed from Taisal and Anaj was everywhere. When Aryl appeared in the Dream Chamber, she could feel it pulse against her shields. Urgency, but no panic. The minds around her brimmed with purpose and determination.

The M’hiray were leaving.

She’d gone first to the small room with their belongings to change clothes, careful to transfer Marcus’ image disk to a safe pocket. Now, she needed Enris. He was here, her inner sense told her.

And he was.

Complete with an angry red line scoring his left cheek, every bit as long as the scar on Haxel’s.

“About that—” Aryl began as he approached.

The rest was lost against his mouth. They held each other as if they’d been apart years instead of moments, emotions surging back and forth between their minds until they blurred into one, filled with grief and sympathy . . . remorse and understanding. Love, most of all.

When they finally moved apart, Enris regarded her somberly. “You told me Marcus could change the world with his words. And he did. He said there were no Tikitik or Oud beyond the mountains. No Om’ray. Aryl, he knew where we could go. He knew we should. We owe him whatever future we have.”

“A future he died for.”

Her Chosen’s dark eyes held hers. “There are worse deaths than the hand of a friend. A very quick friend,” he added with a slight shudder.

“You were there?”

“For all of it.”

Aryl scowled. “Prying.”

“Being the Chosen of Aryl di Sarc.” The hint of a smile. “Something that requires extraordinary ability and courage.”

He could add good reflexes, she thought. Without them, that slice would have been something far worse. Aryl leaned her forehead against his chest for an instant of mute apology, then stood back. “What happens now?”

“Like everyone else, we,” Enris laid his arm over her shoulders, “must pack. The M’hiray are leaving. Before,” with regret “supper.”

Within a tenth, they’d assembled in the Council Chamber. Anyone could ’port what they carried on their person, so every adult had bundles in their arms as well as packs on their backs. Children carried what they could manage. Those who could push through the M’hir stood beside the bulkier items that would be their responsibility. Baskets of food and seed. Gourds of fuel for oillights and cook stoves. Stacks of tools to work the soil. They’d plundered Sona.

Because they weren’t coming back. That was the new Agreement. The M’hiray would leave Cersi and its Om’ray—its Oud and Tikitik—forever and seek a new life.