Reap the Wild Wind by Julie E. Czerneda

Author:Julie E. Czerneda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

She did rest. The dresel coursing through her system satisfied a craving she’d had so long, she’d forgotten. Knowing she was being treated with the same care lavished on Tikitik mothers was—if not reassuring, for Aryl didn’t know what that meant—at least sounded better than being a prisoner or food in storage. Rather than strain her eyes against the darkness, she closed them. Really, it wasn’t that bad standing up inside a stalk. The bindings were rather comfortable, in a limb-numbing way.

Aryl.

Taisal’s sending was strained, as if she used all her strength. Aryl immediately sent her own thought flying to meet it, the result a sure, solid link within the wild darkness of the other. She was too grateful to be alarmed by her growing control, grateful not to have been abandoned. Here.

Then she sensed enclosing walls, a steady light. Her mother was at ease, though her legs ached. You’ve returned to the Cloisters.

A moment’s discomfiture. Haxel insisted. Her scouts will watch for any Tikitik, to summon their Speaker.

No one was coming for her.

Aryl fought an irrational despair. She understood. No one could come. Yena’s resources were stretched to the breaking point. There was no one to spare. The distance was too great.

She’d given her mother—which meant Council and the Adepts—a way to watch her from safety.

She understood that, too.

What do they want?

The Speaker, preparing for negotiation. Her mother did love her, Aryl thought, rather numb. There were simply priorities attached.

I saw the strangers, she sent.

Startlement. Clearly, this wasn’t what Taisal had expected.

Aryl’s lips twitched in a half smile her mother couldn’t see. Probably, she decided, just as well. Did you think they took me because of what I did to Bern?

The hollow feel in the other was answer enough. No wonder Taisal had been frantic to find her, and Council willing to risk its Speaker. They must have believed the worst. Aryl found herself without sympathy.

Who did you see? Where?

Words weren’t enough. Aryl deliberately let her mind dwell on those moments high in the nekis, her glimpses of the black creature and the one who wasn’t Om’ray—yet was. She felt the images leap from her mind.

An answering shock flashed through the other. How are you doing this?

Her next-to-be Forbidden Talent? Aryl kept the thought and its suddenly bitter taste private. It doesn’t matter. These are the strangers, Mother, she sent. They must be. They have a flying machine like the device at the Harvest. The Tikitik must plan to ask me questions about what I saw.

A waiting stillness. They remained linked, mind to mind, within the other place. Then, with an underlying reluctance, Or the Tikitik assume this Om’ray-seeming stranger is one of us. You were in the same grove. They may suspect you share some connection.

One of us? He wasn’t real, Aryl reminded her mother. Perhaps the memory hadn’t been complete.

Taisal must have felt her incredulity. Pay attention, Daughter. Not all the world is defined by Om’ray. There is a secret task set Adepts when they accept the ‘di’ and that is to watch for change in our neighbors as well as ourselves.

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