Ashes and Rain: Sequel to Khe (The Ahsenthe Cycle Book 2) (19 page)

Then movement — to my right. A guardian yanked her weapon from her cloak and leveled it at Jonton. The guardian’s face was hard, her eyes wide, the spots on her neck the red-pink of certainty.

Jonton must have caught the movement too, caught the colors on the doumana’s neck as well. She fired the hose again. The doumana screamed and fell, her stunner clattering on the floor.

The machine suddenly hummed loudly and banged. Two guardians jumped toward Jonton. Jonton squeezed the hose and both doumanas fell.

Everything had happened so quickly I could hardly take it in.

“Enough,” Jonton yelled, and I didn’t know if she meant that anyone who attacked her would also fall, or that she didn’t want to hurt anyone else. I wanted it to be the second, wanted Jonton not to have gone completely insane, not to be a babbler who would destroy her sisters without thought or remorse.

“What now?” Larta stepped forward, but kept her hand in her pocket. Her voice was calm, but her neck showed anger, and nerves, and the bright-greenish-blue of a wanting hope.

Hope, I thought, because Larta, too, wanted there to be no more doumanas Returned or damaged. Wanted to stop Jonton without hurting her. To end the rain.

Jonton glared. Her breath came fast, and she pointed the hose toward Larta. Larta froze where she stood.

“The lumani planned for this,” Jonton said. “They knew a day might come when the comforts and order they provided would be thrown away by foolish doumanas. They had protections built. I learned to use them, just as I learned to work the weather machine.” She glanced down at the hose, then back at Larta. “You will leave now. All of you except Khe.”

Larta hissed a stream of air between her teeth, but she turned and nodded, and watched her one remaining guardian walk up the steps and out, until only she was left. Larta threw a last glance at Jonton and started walking slowly toward the door, nearly bumping into me. Her hand grazed mine, slipping the stunner into my palm. Heart pounding, I closed my fingers tight around the instrument.

The low hum from the weather machine suddenly rose in pitch and loudness. Jonton glanced toward it, and I swung my arm up, leveling the stunner at her chest. Her eyes flicked back to me and grew wide. In that small beat of time Larta turned, ran back, and flung herself at the orindle, knocking her to the ground. They landed with a hard thud, Larta on top.

“Stay down, Jonton,” I said, pointing the stunner at her. I had no idea how to work it, but she didn’t know that. I
hoped
she didn’t know that.

Larta rolled away and pulled herself up into a sit. Her teeth were clenched so tightly I thought they might break from the pressure. She held her hand out to me. I gave her the stunner, glad to be rid of it, but afraid of what she might do. She glared at Jonton.

“There’s still this,” I said, to distract them both, and slid my gaze toward the weather machine, and then to the water-level gauge, which was nearly filled to the top. It must have been storming hard the whole time we were in this room.

“I don’t trust her to touch it,” Larta said as she got to her feet. She kept the stunner pointed at Jonton.

The orindle turned her head to look up at Larta, and smiled.

“I can do it, I think,” I said quickly, before Larta’s anger could rise up again. “She showed me enough. I can at least stop the rain for now.”

“I won’t hurt her,” Larta said. “Not unless she gives me cause.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s see what you can do, Khe. Let’s stop the rain.”

The machine stood stark in the tired air. The silver dials, Jonton had said, were only there for show. The secret of the machine was in changing whispers of air. Very exact whispers, more like the sound of breath than words, and precise hand movements. Something the lumani wouldn’t have been able to do, without the help of a doumana. I didn’t understand how it worked, but the how didn’t matter, only precision.

I swallowed and hoped I remembered the exact sequence Jonton had showed me, the exact pronunciation of the sounds. I stepped up to the machine and spoke, softly, the way I might to a frightened hatchling, being careful to remember the sounds in order, to remember the hand motions in order. I couldn’t guess at what the wrong word or motion might make the machine do. Maybe nothing. Maybe something that could never be put right again.

I saw Larta from the corner of my eye, her posture straight and tense. Jonton sat on the floor, as loose as a dangling thread, her arms around her drawn up knees, watching me. There seemed to be a look of expectation in her eyes. I leaned close to the machine and said the words, while my hands moved in the dance Jonton had showed me. When I was done, I stepped back.

I expected the machine to lurch, make a sound, click off, something. The only sound was the rush of water into the gauge, a gauge that would soon overflow, flooding the room.

“I was right,” Jonton said. “Everything about you is changing. It took me almost from moon to moon to learn the words and the sequence that you saw once and repeated perfectly.”

I turned and glared at her. If I’d done it so well, why was the rain still falling just as hard? Had she tricked me? Seen ahead to this moment and taught me the wrong thing?

Except that the sound in the water gauge was changing. It was slight. So slight I was sure Larta and Jonton couldn’t have caught it. But I did. The drops hitting with less force. The water slowing its swirl.

“You’d better hope she was perfect.” Larta’s voice was cold, each word precise. “We’ll be standing here waiting until the rain completely stops. And then it’s off to Justice House, where your sisters are waiting. And justice there will be, for my fallen sisters.”

Jonton pursed her lips, but nodded. The fight seemed to have gone out of her. Gone, or maybe curled away, waiting for the best moment to strike.

Marnka had been this way in the wilderness — a mad babbler one moment, calm the next.

“We can go now,” I said, my head tilted, my ear hole cocked toward the gauge. “The rain is slowing. It will stop.”

“You’re sure?” Larta asked, her eyes never leaving Jonton.

I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. “I’m sure.” And was sure, though I couldn’t have said why.

Larta accepted that, and motioned to Jonton. “Get up. We’re going now.”

Jonton didn’t ease herself up, she leapt. And jumped sideways, then crouched, her hands on the ground on either side of her feet, as if she might pounce.

Larta fired her stunner. The burst missed Jonton and hit the machine. Sparks flew. Smoke tumbled from the machine, filling the room. I bent over, coughing. I could hear Larta and Jonton coughing as well, and then the sound of only two coughing — Larta and me. The smoke began to clear. Larta stood alone, her face redder than usual, panting. She swung her gaze, scanning the room.

“Where’d she go?”

I shook my head. “Where
could
she go? I didn’t hear her moving. Or the door open.”

The guardian’s eyes flickered around the room, lingered on her fallen sisters. I saw how her breath caught in her chest, how she made herself breathe again.

“A trick door,” Larta said, slipping the stunner back into its pocket. “I can’t think of any other answer.”

I was sure now the lumani hadn’t built this room. What use would they — who could be visible or invisible to doumanas as they chose — have of a hidden escape route? If doumanas had made the trick door, then we could find it.

“Tell me what she did,” I said.

Larta made little tsking sounds as she thought. “I couldn’t see much in the smoke.” She ran her hand over her scalp. “I remember now. I know what she did — she bent down like this.”

Larta scooted over a couple of hand’s-breadths and squatted, imitating Jonton’s stance, and tapped her fingers on the floor, moving slowly up and down by her feet.

“I don’t know exactly where she touched,” Larta said. “There’s nothing on the ground that I can see that looks like an opening.”

I hunkered down a little ways from her and let my vision go loose, trying to see with lumani eyes. The floor was crisscrossed with scrapes of different colors. I wasn’t sure what the colors meant, but I was glad to see them. They didn’t match up with emotions that I could tell. There were pink trails, the color of nurturing, and that made no sense. Pale-yellow-blue formed a puddle in one spot, but I didn’t think acceptance was an emotion either doumana had felt during their struggle.

“You’re sure this is the spot she disappeared from?”

“I’m sure,” Larta said, still tapping her fingers along the floor. “More or less.”

“Stop,” I said, remembering something I’d heard while the smoke had clogged my eyes. “Not like that. Like this.” I moved next to Larta and tapped my fingers on the floor in the rhythm I’d heard.

In a blink, Larta was gone.

There’d been no sound. I hadn’t seen her go.

I stared at the empty spot on the floor where she’d been. Sweat prickled my body, crown to sole. I couldn’t let her go to wherever she’d gone alone.

My hand was still on the spot I’d last touched. I pressed my fingers into the floor and carefully sidled around to squat where Larta had been. I tapped the rhythm.

The small room where I found myself was formed from compacted reddish dirt, flat on the bottom, with rounded sides and ceiling. It must have been dug out from the space below the machine room, which was below the research center. Probably we’d all landed in the same spot — first Jonton, then Larta, then me — slipping into a musty, underground world. I’d had no sense of motion. Just one place one moment, another place the next. I didn’t know how that was possible.

The slap, slap of running feet moving away from where I’d landed jolted me back to
why
I was here. I hauled myself to my feet and hurried after the sound — out of the small room, into a passageway.

The passage wasn’t wide. I probably could have touched both sides by extending my arms. Standing on my toes, my arms straight above my head, I might have reached the ceiling. The cavern was dry though. However deep below ground we were, water didn’t seep in. A vein of clearstone ran through the red dirt, about my shoulder height, reflecting the glow from the tiny luminescent creatures that wriggled through the soil. The glow lit the passage in a soft-white light. Two sets of faint footprints marred the dirt.

The passage bent. I couldn’t see who was running — only heard the steps moving away — but guessed it had to be Larta chasing Jonton. The sound of running feet faded. I tried to guage how far ahead Larta would have to be for me not to hear her any more. I could hear a long distance, but things twisted and turned here, the passage seeming to spiral in on itself, then jut out in a new direction. There were plenty of other passages breaking off from the one I was following. Jonton and Larta could have gone down one of them. Or several of them, if more passages broke off from the first one.

I tried to see their trail with lumani vision. I had begun to think I’d got some control over the vision, could make it work when I wanted. I saw nothing but dirt.

I stopped a moment and listened hard. Was that something, there, to the left? A shout? I held my breath and opened my mouth slightly, to hear better.

Nothing.

I rubbed my hand over my face, thinking. I could wait here. Whoever was running would have to come back this way. Except there could be other exits. In truth, I didn’t know where any exits were — or if there were an exit. The trip underground might be one way.

The footprints in the dirt had disappeared. The soil was too hard here for the faint impressions to show. Or maybe Larta had chased Jonton down a side route. I turned and crept back the way I’d come, bent over at the waist, looking for another set of prints to join the ones I’d left.

I found them at an opening jutting off to the right. Two sets — one flat-footed, the other toes only, a runner. I wanted to run too. My energy level was ramping up now, here, below ground. I thought maybe it was the planet’s doing, the way — since the lumani had changed me — that the planet nourished me, so I rarely ate, drank, or slept. That deep into the world as I was now, the planet gave me more than I gained through bare feet on raw soil.

Another shout echoed against the walls. I was sure this time it was a shout. It came from somewhere ahead. Now I had sounds to follow I ran. Mad sounds — grunting and shrieks, the ugly noise of flesh striking flesh. My neck grew hot from fear and worry. I came around a corner and saw them.

Larta and Jonton rolled together on the ground, each desperate for the top position, both of their necks aglow with the black-blue of determination. I froze where I stood. Doumanas didn’t do this. Young beastlets, I’d seen them rolling and tumbling with each other, fighting, but not doumanas. It wasn’t in our nature. Hadn’t been in our nature.

Larta seemed to have won for the moment — she had her hands crossed on Jonton’s chest, holding her down. She leaned low, as if to say something in the orindle’s ear hole.

Jonton bit hard into Larta’s shoulder, and Larta yelled. Crimson drops rose on her skin in the shape of the orindle’s teeth. In the eye blink when Larta lost concentration from the pain and surprise, Jonton shoved her hard, throwing Larta onto her back, and climbed on her chest. The orindle drew her arm back. Her hand squeezed tight and Jonton slammed her fist hard into Larta’s jaw. The guardian’s head lay at an awkward angle on her neck.

A hot flame streaked down my chest at that sound, at what I’d seen. Anger roiled through me, as fierce as any I’d ever felt. Jonton jumped up and, before I could grab her, she ran down the passageway — not the way we’d come, but deeper into what was unknown.

I didn’t think. I chased after Jonton, determined to bring her down and back to Larta. Jonton’s lead was slight. Her neck was still lit black-blue, but the blue-red of anxiety had bloomed there as well. She should have been anxious. However single-minded she was to escape, I was more resolute that she wouldn’t. I ran hard until I was within an arm’s length of her. I leapt toward her back, wrapped my arms around her and hauled her to the ground. The whoosh of air streaming out of her lungs as she landed was strangely satisfying. I didn’t like that it made me happy.

I thought I heard Larta puffing, running up. Jonton and I rolled on the ground, shifting direction, and tumbled into a new room — dirt floor, but stone walls, not like the other rooms. I held Jonton down, pinning her shoulders to the dirt

I felt a soft knee in my back, Larta nudging me aside. I wished again that my spots would light — to show Larta how happy I was to see she was fine. She grabbed Jonton by the arm and pulled her to her feet. In Larta’s free hand was the stunner, pointed at Jonton.

I turned, and gasped at the room.

It was the size of the huge receiving room in Research Center Three. I thought maybe we were directly under that room, this one a mirror space — but that room, the one above, held furniture and open space.

This room held floating faces.

“What is this place?” Larta asked. Her voice quivered in a way I’d never heard from her before. Bold Larta, as shaken as I was.

The faces floated in three distinct areas, as if they didn’t belong together, but they were all doumanas and males. The faces were slightly transparent, not like on a visionstage where you’d swear you could touch the doumana speaking, and it was only faces, not whole bodies — face after face, suspended in the air like hanging balls. They made my stomach queasy, and yet I couldn’t help searching for a face that was familiar. None were.

I sensed Larta come up next to me, warmth radiating from her skin from the run. The blood, where Jonton had bitten her, had stopped flowing and was starting to dry. She held Jonton tight by the arm, though the orindle seemed in no mood to run.

“I know her,” Larta said.

“Who?”

She jutted her chin toward one of the floating faces. “She lives in Chimbalay. I don’t know her well. I think her name is Gunt. She’s a technician at Presentation House.” Larta took another step forward, pulling Jonton with her. “I know him, too. He was a male I didn’t choose at my first Resonance. He tried hard, though.”

I stared at the faces, an idea crystallizing in my mind. I wanted to touch them, but was afraid to, as if they might pop like bubbles in boiling water. “I think I know what this is. We keep accounts like this of the plants and preslets at Lunge. It’s a breeding record.”

“Very good, Khe,” Jonton said.

Irritation churned in me at her tone, but I kept silent. Larta’s annoyance was more obvious, glowing brown-black on her neck. It was only her training as a guardian, I supposed, that kept Larta from doing something she’d regret.

“I know how it works,” Jonton said. “Would you like to see who came before you? Who you made?”

“I’d like to see you get us out of here,” Larta said, her patience clearly running as thin as water now.

I’d never thought about how I came to be. Two unknown soumyo had mated; I had come from the egg they’d made. I had wondered if my offspring might have inherited some of my grower’s talent, but there was no way to know, so I’d not dwelled on the question. Now, I did want to know. Desperately.

“Can you show me?” I asked Jonton.

She smiled and took a tentative step away from Larta, who reluctantly let her.

“Like this,” Jonton said, moving her hands in a complicated rhythm over a green panel. “We’ll find you, shall we? Khe of Lunge commune.”

Something in the room clicked and whirred. My face came up, small as a seed at first, then growing to life-sized. It chilled me to see it. To one side were two other faces, one doumana, one male. Nice enough looking, both with skin the same shade as mine, but strangers. They meant nothing to me. On the other side, another face came up. Male. His eyes were the same shape and color as mine. I didn’t know what the two sides meant. Once we emerge, we look the same through our lifetimes. The male and female on one side could be my progenitors or my offspring. The male on the other side could be either as well. I gazed at the faces — no different than seeing a stranger’s face on the streets of Chimbalay. A fourth face came up.

“Trah!” Larta’s voice rang with surprise.

My heart banged in my chest. I stepped toward the face I knew so well.

Nez.

“If this is a breeding record,” Larta said, “then Nez is your offspring.”

Heat flashed through me. I knew what Larta said was true. Perhaps I’d already known it. The bond I felt with Nez was different from what I felt with any of my other sisters, stronger. The gold cord I sometimes saw reaching from one of us to the other — I’d never seen that with anyone else.

“The lumani tracked everything,” Jonton said. “Generation after generation, every mating. They tracked the eggs. When hatchlings left the egg, the lumani used the records to decide where to place them. They thought that looking at the progenitors could predict what a doumana or male would be good at in their lives.”

I knew the lumani saw us as some grand experiment, but this shook me to my core. The lumani had made us, made me, made every single doumana and male then alive what they were. None of what had happened after their destruction was my fault. It simply was what we were — what they had made us. Some were brave, and some fearful, and some wanted nothing more than to be left with their sisters to do their work. And some wanted power so great that it rivaled the lumani themselves.

The room felt suddenly close, unstable — as though the ceiling might crash down at any moment.

Nez
was
my
offspring
.

“Do you know the way out?” I asked Jonton.

“I know every secret of Research Center Three. Every secret of the Powers.”

Larta jerked the orindle’s arm — fed up, I thought, as I was, with Jonton’s brags. “Come on. Show us.”

Jonton stood her ground. “There’s something else here Khe might like to know about.”

“Just Khe?” Larta said.

“In this case.” Jonton stared at me, her eyes focused on mine, the moments passing away, growing as stale as the air in that underground room.

“This is a place of power,” she said.

Larta sniffed. “The lumani had Chimbalay built for them. Yes, we know.”

Jonton’s smile was tight. “Not The Powers, the lumani.
Power
. Power for The Powers, I suppose.”

“We should leave now,” I said, a fresh nervousness pounding through me.

“Have you never wondered why Chimbalay was built here?” Jonton asked. “It’s an odd place for a kler, wilderness all around. The nearest commune or neighboring kler is many days’ walk away. No other place is set off the way Chimbalay is, not even the nesting grounds.”

Larta still had hold of one of Jonton’s arms. Her hand tightened slightly around it.

“Your story better be good,” the guardian said. “I’m getting tired of being underground. I want to get out of here.”

Jonton’s eyes tracked to where Larta’s hand was squeezing her arm, then back to me. “Chimbalay was built where it is because the lumani recognized that this is a natural power spot, a place where the magnetic energies of the planet come together and concentrate.”

She twisted slightly, pulling away from Larta’s hold. Larta let her, but shot Jonton a look that clearly said if the orindle tried to escape she wouldn’t get far — and would be the worse for it.

Subtle shifts, I thought — Larta so curious she was willing to give up a slice of control. The need to know thrumming in me like insects trapped in a bottle. Jonton loose, her stance like an instructor on the visionstage, her voice pitched to carry.

“We know our planet has magnetic fields,” Jonton said. “We use them to navigate to our nesting sites. But there are also peculiarities, locations where the magnetic forces of the planet intersect and intensify. This is one of them.”

She paused, and looked disappointed that neither Larta nor I said anything, or even moved.

“There’s a smaller one under Lunge commune, as it happens.”

Still neither Larta nor I spoke.

“The Powers, the lumani,” Jonton said, “have long life spans, much longer than ours, but not as long naturally as they managed to eke out here. They fed on electricity, but what sustained them, what gave them life, was the planet itself. They built Chimbalay where the force was strongest.”

I nodded unconsciously, then noticed I’d done it. I’d already reasoned that, after the lumani had changed me, it was the planet that became my food and drink — that kept me alive. I always felt better with my feet on the ground. When Simanca had thrown me into the underground root cache and I’d lain in the dark for what seemed a long time, I was stronger than I had been in a while. Here, in this place, deep below the surface, I felt better and healthier than I ever remembered feeling.