Reap the Wild Wind (30 page)

Chapter 24

S
OMETHING WAS ABOUT TO change. Soon. The
taste
was strong, as when she’d sensed the coming of the M’hir. Whatever it was, she knew it would be bad. Very bad.
Not that this moment was much better, Aryl thought. Marcus and Pilip conferred in anxious tones, the Trant’s twig-fingers now locked on certain controls. The Carasian had begun talking into a tube like the one the flitter-stranger had used, its voice a monotone, repeating the same sounds over and over. Beneath the voices, the aircar whined and groaned, shuddering more and more often.
Aryl provided the only help she could, keeping still and quiet. Janex spared some eyes for her once in a while, but otherwise, she was ignored.
Out the window, through the smudges she realized now were traces of burning, she watched their progress over the canopy. Pilip hadn’t taken them any higher; in fact Aryl judged they were steadily, if slowly, descending. She didn’t take this as hopeful.
The canopy was changing. Yena Om’ray did come this far, to tend the Watchers, or, if on Passage to Grona, to pick their way through the rock cuts between mountain ridges. Climbing the mountains themselves was, Aryl had been told, impossible. A bleak and inhospitable landscape.
The reality she could see past the Human’s head was worse. Huge sloping walls of brown and red-streaked gray rose in front; the closer they approached, the less sky was visible above. Clouds appeared, snagged on the rocks like dresel wings caught on branches.
How tall were mountains? She wondered this for the first time in her life. It explained why the M’hir roared, if this was the barrier it had to overcome first.
The aircar began to climb. Did they have to cross, too?
The shudders and vibrations continued. Aryl thought of her fich, dropping from the sky, thought of falling, thought of . . .
Suddenly, it was calm, silent. Before she could sigh with relief, the aircar tipped forward and plunged toward the ground.
Pilip let out a cry, fingers working frantically. The plunge slowed, but didn’t stop.
Then everything did.

* * *

The first thing Aryl noticed was the smell. Not of growing things. Of the dead.
She fought her way to full consciousness; short of that, she realized she was pinned in place, unable to move. She pushed with all the strength fear gave her, gasped, and pushed again. Again.
Her arm was free. A shoulder. She pushed harder, sobbing with effort, and light blinded her as something shifted loose above. She paused, trying to see, then smelled something else. Smoke.
Desperate now, Aryl shoved and squirmed. Her clothes tore. She left skin behind. But finally, she was free of what held her.
Who.
The air was thick with fumes, smoke only part of it, but Aryl could see well enough to know Janex was the weight she’d struggled against. The slick black of its body and claws were scraped, fasteners broken off, but none of that looked serious. Yet its eyes drooped, motionless and dull.
She eased to a shaky stand— the roof, and most of the aircar itself, was missing— and found the reason. A huge shard of metal was wedged into the side of the Carasian’s head, cracks from that terrible wound leaking soft yellow flesh.
Had Janex not thrown itself over her, the shard would have gone right through her body. Aryl pressed her hand against the creature’s chill shell. “Thank you,” she whispered.
A groan drew her attention to the others. The sound came from Marcus, slumped in his seat. Pilip was— what was left of the Trant was thoroughly broken and the source of the odor competing with the smoke. Aryl scrambled over the ruin to reach the Human.
His eyes were closed beneath a mask of blood. As red as an Om’ray’s, she noticed with a calm that astonished her. Her quick inspection was a relief— nothing worse, that she could find anyway, than shallow cuts on his face and through the cloth to lightly score his chest.
Aryl finally found the courage to look at where they were.
Jagged gray rocks, the smallest larger than her body, surrounded them on all sides. They looked as though they’d slipped from a great hand to lie in a vast even sweep that continued as far as her eyes could reach. The mountainside. She’d feared as much. Well away from the first pass that led to Grona. She looked toward Yena. From this height, the great rastis groves looked like the surface of the Lake of Fire, flat and featureless.
Aryl didn’t know what lived here. She’d never cared before. Now, she worked quickly. There was nothing she could do about the corpses— they would attract hunters. She almost laughed. Hunters who were in for an otherworldly surprise.
“Enough of that,” she scolded herself, knowing the only chance she had was to keep a clear head.
That they had.
Decision made, Aryl worked to free the Human’s legs, presently trapped in a spongy white substance. It pulled away easily. She didn’t wish harm to him, despite what he’d done with his meddling. He might even be of help, though she had her doubts on that score.
Marcus groaned again when she was done, but didn’t wake, not even when she shook him roughly. Not giving herself time to doubt, Aryl placed her hand on his forehead and lowered her shields. She’d given strength to Yorl for his healing; she didn’t have that Talent herself. But she could rouse the Human. Or try.
If he didn’t wake, she’d have to abandon him. That was the cold truth.
His thoughts were dazed and full of pain. Aryl concentrated, sending his name into that unfamiliar mind. His name plus her image of him, all she knew of him, everything she felt. That couldn’t be helped. It was what Om’ray did when summoning a mind back. It was what she had to do.
“
Set— nam
?!” He gave a violent shake that dislodged her hand. Aryl moved to give him room, checking their surroundings as she did.
She hated the rocks already. The perfect cover for an ambush or lurker, they obstructed every path, adding time to walk around. Time— she looked at the sky— time they probably didn’t have.
“Ar-yl?”
She turned back to Marcus. “We must leave. Now. This—” her fingers brushed the Carasian’s shell, “— there will be hunters. Do you understand me?”
Under the blood, his face was stricken. His hands shook as he stood at last, shook as he touched first the Trant, then, with an anguished cry, the Carasian.
Was it a difficult thing she asked? Aryl wondered. An Om’ray would walk away from the dead, feeling grief, but no connection to the flesh once the mind was gone. Did a Human feel the same?
They were so different. How could he trust her?
Because he must. The swarms might not threaten them in the dark; Aryl was quite sure something would. It was the way the world worked. “Come, Marcus,” she said gently, taking his hand. “We need a safe place before truenight.”
She was relieved when he nodded. “First. Comtech—” then a rattle of his words, which he stopped almost at once. “Find what need first,” Marcus managed to tell her. “Quickquickquick.”
Quick she approved. And if there was anything left in the wreckage of use, she was willing to look for it. While Marcus fumbled around the area where Janex had been, she looked everywhere else.
Her search took her outside the remains of the aircar. Pristine white boxes lay everywhere. Aryl didn’t like how visible they were. Her gaze kept returning to the groves below, alert for the signs of pursuit.
The Tikitik wouldn’t leave them alone. That, more than night hunters, drove her to search for anything that could be a weapon. But the aircar had been made of tough materials, and she found no broken pieces small enough to carry though many were sharp. She settled for a length of flexible tube, scorched and hollow. Whipped through the air, it would deliver a substantial blow.
“Are you ready?” she asked Marcus, having spent all the time she dared.
He supported himself on one hand, shaking his head. He’d wiped most of the blood from his face. The deeper cuts still dripped— a significant problem they could do nothing about here. He had a bag with a long strap over his shoulder. She reached for it, and he shook his head again, the movement causing him pain.
“I’m stronger,” Aryl reminded him.
“Comlink, bad. Stay here, us.” With a pat on the ruined aircar. “Help. Help come. Here. Comtech, good.” A gesture to Janex’s body. “Call help. Safe soon.”
“Not soon enough.” She pointed down the slope. “Look.”
Flickers of movement where the vegetation met rock. She’d seen them for a while before recognizing what caught her attention. These were cautious, deliberate moves. Not hunters or grazers. Tikitik. Never out where they might be clearly seen, but Aryl felt no doubt, only a quiet dread. “Tikitik,” she told her companion. “The ones who tried to trap us in the air. Do you understand, Marcus?”
“Understand who. Not understand why.”
Seeing what appeared to be honest bewilderment, Aryl shrugged. “You killed quite a few. They aren’t the sort to forget that.” She took pity on the Human and made it simpler, with gestures. “You killed them.” This was no time to mention what lay beneath the Lake of Fire, or the other Harvest.
“Accident.”
“You have too many,” Aryl said bitterly. “Come.”
Taking his bag despite his protest, she secured it over her shoulder using the braided blanket strip around her midsection. She started walking, her choice to cut across the slope at first to test the footing. It would test Marcus’ ability with this terrain as well, knowledge they’d both need.
After a moment, she heard him follow.

* * *

The Tikitik stayed down, within the grove, their moves furtive and disturbingly quick. The sun, on its way to give day to Grona, soon hid its brightness behind cloud. The rocks surrounding them flattened in that diffused light, confusing the senses. They had to work their way around and between the largest, some the size of the strangers’ building, most taller than they. If Aryl hadn’t been able to
sense
exactly where she was, she’d soon have been as lost as the Human appeared to be.
“Where we?” The same plaintive question. He didn’t have breath to spare for it. Sweat soaked his torn shirt, spread the bloodstains. She’d driven them both; as she’d feared, Marcus wasn’t used to physical exertion.
She hadn’t expected him to endure it as well as he had. “Where are we?” she corrected gently. “We are close to the Watchers. We can rest there.”
“Safe?” He’d noticed her preoccupation with any view downslope, toward the edge of the grove. He’d begun to watch himself. Now his voice cracked on the word.
“Better.” Aryl sighed inwardly. In the coming dry season, they would have met scouts and Adepts, as well as those who came to clean the Watchers and prepare them for the next M’hir Wind. Now, if she
reached,
the rock-littered slope ahead was empty of Om’ray. They were alone.
Aryl had tried to contact Taisal again and again without success. She tried now as she slipped between two flat-sided rocks that might have cracked, one from the other, leaving this cool, shadowy gap. The same result. Taisal was there; for some reason she wouldn’t connect through the
other
with her daughter.
Best guess? Taisal was in another Council meeting, or with other Adepts.
If ever there was a time not to be careful, Aryl thought ruefully, it was now. A shame she couldn’t explain that to her mother. But she didn’t bother trying to force that link.
They came out of the shadow and she halted in dismay. A giant blocked the straight path, its slanted surface pitted and worn. It looked like a minor mountain itself.
“What are . . . Watchers?” Marcus asked, a hand on the nearest rock.
“You’ll see.” She assessed his condition and the barrier ahead. They’d have to go around it. Which way, was the question. It was more than kindness to spare the Human extra steps; there was only so far will could safely carry him. Push a body too far, Aryl knew, and the clumsiness of fatigue became the greatest risk of all. “Wait here. Here,” she pointed to the cool shadow, when he didn’t move at once. Marcus turned to put his back to the smooth wall of rock and slid to the ground, his relief obvious.
She removed her stranger-boots to free her toes, eyeing the huge rock.
“What do?”
“You’ll see that, too,” she told him, her lips twitching into a half smile.
It was a different kind of climbing, not difficult. The slant of gray-and-white rock was easier than any rastis stalk; her fingers and toes fit into its fine cracks as easily as they’d fit cracks in wood. The footing was rough, but secure— once she learned to avoid depressions filled with loose pebbles. Aryl remained instinctively wary of the few deep crevices in its surface; such could have inhabitants to object. She had a great respect for even small things that could bite.
The reach and pull, the extension of muscle though sore and tired, exhilarated her. It was a moment’s work to reach the top and stand.
Finally, she thought. A decent view.
The mountainside ahead changed its nature. Instead of an even, downward sweep of rubble, it turned into a maze fractured by sharp, irregular drops. Beyond these the slope ended in a chasm that cut deep to disappear into the mountain’s own shadow. Or was this the join between two mountains? she wondered, unable to discern the top of the opposite side amid the lowering clouds. Regardless, she knew what she saw. The first pass to Grona. A hard road, according to those who made it through on Passage, and a hard place to live, trapped between rock and sky. She’d dismissed it thus, Aryl realized, without comprehending what that meant.
She lowered her gaze to the mouth of the pass, where the grove claimed a foothold between mountains. She could see the bare crowns of rastis mixed with the tips of nekis past the rocky edge. From there, she followed the rise of rock until she found the Watchers, their outline familiar from images shared mind to mind.
The reality was oddly smaller. If she hadn’t known what she would see, Aryl might have missed them completely.
The Watchers looked like holes near the top of the sheer cliff that began not far from where she stood. The cliff itself rose to slice the side of the mountain, scarred along its length by other holes, most larger and less regular. At its base was a wide ledge that ended in another plunge of rock, its end hidden within the canopy far below.
Aryl squinted up the slope, trying without success to see where the Watchers began. Cloud obscured the upper reach of this mountain too. Not just cloud, she worried. Mist was beginning to trail through the rock around them, fingers of it sliding up from the great groves themselves. It would soon be thick enough to hide the Tikitik, should they venture from that shelter.
She licked condensation from her lips and stared at the thick, lush green. When had it become a threat, instead of home?
Turning, she considered her return climb. Her gaze lifted, reluctantly, to look for the wreckage of the aircar.
Aryl tensed.
She knew where they’d been. If she needed proof, the litter of white boxes from the crash showed the way. But the aircar itself, its broken pieces, were no longer in sight.
Something was wrong. She frowned, unwilling to believe her eyes, then ran to the far edge of the rock for a better look.
“Oh, no.”
From that perspective, the wreckage— what remained of it— was again visible. She hadn’t seen it not because it had been moved, but because the rocks around it had changed their position. They were now crowded around, some on top, crushing the bodies beneath. Amna Om’ray buried their dead, she thought numbly.
This wasn’t a burial. The rocks— which weren’t rocks— were feeding.
Suddenly, the last place Aryl wanted to be was on top of the largest one on the slope.
She ran more than climbed down, jumping free as soon as she could, her bare feet scattering pebbles. “Marcus!” she shouted. She’d left him between two “rocks,” Aryl realized with horror. What if . . .
“Here.” He stood nearby, looking better for the rest, if alarmed by her tone.
Aryl looked past him, at the paired rocks. Was it her imagination, that the gap between had narrowed? These things, whatever they were, could move too slowly to catch in action. As scavengers, such might not be a threat during the day, but at truenight, when she and Marcus would have to stop? If they were attracted to blood, she thought worriedly, plenty of it coated them both.
If the “rocks” were hunters? They could work together— build traps for those foolish enough to wander between them.
Was this why the Tikitik hadn’t left the grove?
“We have to hurry,” she told the Human, feeling trapped already.