Rift in the Sky

He’d deserved his fate, Aryl thought grimly. As did Seru, happily Joined to Ezgi, once of Serona.

Morla waited, the image of patience. She hadn’t, Aryl realized abruptly, come to suggest this on her own. “Haxel sent you.” The First Scout’s quick knife had saved Aryl, trapped in the M’hir by Mauro’s attempt to Join with her instead. No Om’ray was known to have killed another before, though to be fair, Mauro had hardly seemed one of them by the end. She shuddered inwardly. “She shouldn’t regret what she did.”

“That one?” Morla’s face wrinkled. “Haxel’s only regret is that she didn’t move faster.”

Enris dropped his feet to the wooden floor. “Rorn,” he declared.

Haxel’s Chosen? “Why?”

“Haven’t you noticed? He’s her conscience.”

“It might help Menasel.” They all looked at Seru, who blushed. “Mauro was her cousin,” she went on, determined, if hesitant. “It might help—everyone. We’ve done nothing to mark the passing of Tuana.”

Aryl was jolted by grief. Enris gestured apology as he tightened his shields, his eyes hooded. She laid her fingers on his arm. We are one, she sent gently. Never fear to share your pain.

“How can we ring bells for Tuana?” Morla asked. “We don’t know—I’m sorry, Enris—but we don’t know how many died there, or who.” She gestured apology, but went on, “Surely the survivors have rung their own bells.”

“This isn’t about their grief, but ours,” Seru insisted, her voice growing firm. Whether pregnancy or a blissful Choice, something had brought out the strength Aryl had known lay in her cousin. “You can reach that far, Aryl. You can tell us who lives. Then we’ll know who to mourn.”

No one had asked this of her. Not even Enris, who looked at her with sudden hope.

An Om’ray who left his Clan was as if dead to that Clan. It had always been so. UnChosen took Passage to find Choice and a new home, or die in the attempt. The family and friends they had in the past never spoke of them again. It was the way of the world.

A way her Talent could change forever. Aryl swallowed. Is this what you want?

Not for myself. His eyes fixed on hers. I have my new life. But for Worin’s sake. For the others. They didn’t choose to leave their families. They should know what became of them.

Aryl’s fingers strayed to the metal bracelet she wore, turned it on her wrist, explored the smooth ripples that mirrored a mountain stream. It was of Tuana; Enris had made it there before he’d left. Before they’d met. “Stay with me,” she said out loud, then closed her eyes.

She relaxed, let herself be attracted to the glow of other Om’ray, moved past Sona’s cluster of life to touch Grona’s, moved farther and ignored all between, until . . .

Tuana.

Having reached the here-I-am, she relaxed further to allow each glow to become who-I-am . . . Names filled her mind . . . more than names. Identities, full and rich and connected one to the other. No Om’ray existed alone, whole or Lost. Their bonds were threads of light through the darkness.

Too few.

Enris. With her. She shared her awareness of Tuana’s Om’ray; in return, she couldn’t escape his despair and anguish. She took his pain into herself, soothed it, helped him past it. Showed him.

There. Mendolar. A connection that stretched, however tenuous, to him and back. Other names. Serona. S’udlaat. Edut. Licor. Annk. Other connections. Faint, too faint. But real.

If she let herself, she could trace them between every living Om’ray, see the world’s shape as it truly was, know her place in it.

With an effort, Aryl shrank her awareness to her own body and opened her eyes.

“Dama Mendolar,” Enris said wonderingly. “I should have known. My grandmother,” he clarified for the rest of them. “It’s not the first reshaping she’s survived.”

“Could you—?” Aryl found herself unable to say it.

Enris seemed to fill the room as he rose to his feet. Only his uncle, Galen sud Serona, rivaled him in size. “I have the names of the living. I’ll tell the rest.” Then he paused to gaze down at Seru. “But there aren’t enough bells for the dead.”

In the end, Sona’s bells were silent. Instead, when everyone had gathered within the Cloisters’ Council Chamber, dressed in their finest—or at least cleanest—clothes, the Tuana stepped upon the raised dais. Murmurs and sendings stopped. The dark of truenight pressed above the gray dirt piled outside the windows. It reflected the glowstrip that banded the ceiling, so rivers of light appeared beyond the Tuana, meeting at some unimaginable distance.