Rift in the Sky

They should never have been exiled. Aryl felt a tear trace her cheek, curl along her jaw. Her mother had claimed Yena’s Adepts dreamed who should go, choosing those who could survive together. Myris and Ael had no new Talents, no unusual strength or Power. Only compassion and courage.

Is Yena safer?

“No.” The room seethed with emotion. Easier to form words aloud. “No, it’s not.”

Her mother had sent them. Because of a dream.

Adepts dreamed to a purpose. A purpose set by their Cloisters’ Keeper.

“I’ll be back.”

ARYL . . . his protest vanished with her surroundings.

The M’hir taunted, sang of death and insanity, tried to confuse. These were her reactions to the roiling darkness, not the truth. Not that the truth belonged here. Nothing real did. Aryl concentrated on where she should be . . .

... and was.

The Meeting Hall had been humid with breath, warmed with bodies and cookstoves, fragrant with the remains of the morning meal. Crowded with the living and the dead.

This was no place as peaceful or safe. Overhead, green metal had been woven into a mesh tight enough to keep out the rain. She stood on metal slats, raised the height of a grown rastis above the black water of the Lay. To either side, the mesh widened to allow the hot, heavy air of the canopy to caress her, thick with the scent of flower, fruit, and rot. There was no sky, no ground, no rock. Only that which struggled to live, and that which failed and died.

Home. This would always be home.

Mother.

Driven through the M’hir, the summons couldn’t be overheard or ignored. How long Taisal di Sarc would let her daughter wait on Yena’s bridge—that was a question.

Biters arrived first. The mountain spring encouraged bare arms and hands during the heat of day, bare legs made it easier when filling buckets. Aryl gritted her teeth, accepting the bites as deserved. Not that Enris would let her forget it. Despite the distance between them, their link was as strong as ever. He kept his shields in place. Let her have this.

Aryl scratched the rising welts on her forearm. Maybe they wouldn’t all swell.

Yena’s Cloisters rose on its own massive stalk. The bridge met the paired doors to its lowermost platform, the level buried at Sona by the Oud. Aryl faced them, not seeing the lovely colors coaxed from the metal, or their size.

If she lowered her shields and reached, she’d know who was on the other side. The solitary presence at her back would be the scout assigned to the bridge platform. He wouldn’t have sensed her arrival, so close to the rest of Yena. Few Om’ray had her ability to sense exact numbers within the glow of their kind.

That glow was potent, alluring. Almost two hundred, mere steps away. It made Sona’s few more precious.

Mother.

Here.

The doors turned open, spilling light, creating new shadows. A slender figure in a hooded brown robe stepped through. Another pulled the doors closed again.

The locks reset.

She had their secret. These would open to her knowledge, to her name in the records of this Cloisters—unless they’d stripped it.

Not that she’d be welcome.

The figure stopped and threw back her hood, revealing a netted mass of black hair and a pale face as closed as the doors. Taisal di Sarc. For the first time, Aryl could see the resemblance between sisters. The wide-set eyes, the high forehead, the graceful line of throat were the same. The differences had always mattered more. Myris would have been incapable of this intimidating glare. Her Power would never have tested Aryl’s shields like this.

“Mother.”

“Come to explain yourself ?”

“Explain myself?” Hard to frown with dignity while biters feasted on her ears, but Aryl did her best. “It’s your turn for that. I know Yena’s Cloisters has a Keeper; someone who controls the dreams of your Adepts. Why dream to exile us? Don’t tell me it was to protect Yena from the Tikitik. There had to be an Om’ray purpose. Why?”

The very essence of dignity, Taisal lifted an eyebrow. “While I, Daughter, want to know why Yena’s Adepts now dream of Sona.”

Her heart thudded in her chest; could her mother hear it?

Oran.

It had to be. She’d succeeded after all, but told no one. Instead of controlling Sona’s Cloisters to dream of what might help her own Clan, somehow she was reaching out to others. But why? Aryl swallowed bile. “What do you dream?”

Distaste. “Walking on dirt. Cold. Darkness. Oud.” Taisal’s shields tightened until she seemed to disappear. “And what you can do. All of you.”

Not the time to admit “all” was an exaggeration. Not the time to vent her fury at Oran di Caraat or try to comprehend what the Adept might have hoped to accomplish.

“It wasn’t our doing. But—”

Her mother knew. Everything.