Rift in the Sky Read Free Page A

robustly consummated their own.
    Enris, wisely, had refrained from any comment whatsoever.
    â€œSeru’s problem.” Naryn dismissed the subject of Oran’s pregnancy with a callous shrug.
    Aryl felt a rush of sympathy for her cousin. Well aware of the Adept’s opinion of her, Seru kept her distance. Now they’d be forced into one another’s company, for the sake of the unborn.
    Pregnancy, however, didn’t explain why Oran would bother with locks. If anything, she ’ported more frivolously than the children. “Why the doors?”
    Naryn’s smile was unpleasant. “Her friend can’t get in otherwise.”
    â€œHoyon.” Who had yet to ’port.
    Like any Talent, there were those who took to it like breathing, those who struggled, and those who possessed no ability at all. The Adept could send objects into the M’hir, just not himself. His Chosen, Oswa, though less powerful, had needed only to share Aryl’s memory of how it was done.
    How much of Hoyon’s “couldn’t” was fear? Not the first time she’d wondered that. For something this new, Adept training was of no use. There’d been no way to predict who of Sona would be capable or how the Talent would manifest beyond oneself. Touch mattered. Only Aryl could ’port another Om’ray through the M’hir without touching that individual, but she couldn’t do the same for an object unless she held it in her hands. Enris and Fon could send anything they saw into the M’hir, but not reliably bring it out again.
    As for ’porting itself, Power made a difference: the weaker couldn’t travel as far as those stronger, though no one knew why. Aryl suspected a deeper instinct kept Om’ray from staying too long with the M’hir. That darkness was utterly strange. Terrifying, consuming, alluring. It took Power to stay sane amid its chaos, to forge a connection to another mind. All the while, time crawled, measured itself in that outpouring of strength, became finite. Overstay, and risk losing oneself.
    She and Enris had yet to find limits to their range. Seru and a few of the others, including Haxel, could ’port no farther than the mounds. The rest practiced ’porting to and from the Cloisters’ Council Chamber, safe from watchers, when not working the fields. Or played ’port and seek to torment their elders.
    Hoyon should be strong enough.
    Fear, then. She and Enris had been driven into the M’hir by desperate need. Maybe they should find Hoyon his own crisis. At the thought, the free ends of Aryl’s hair lashed against her back.
    The two Grona, busy inside the abandoned Cloisters. “What are they doing?” she puzzled aloud. “The place is empty.”
    Its surroundings weren’t. The Oud gnawed at the nearby cliff with their machines, day through truenight according to scouts. The Stranger camp stood between that busyness and the grove around the Cloisters. It was no place for Om’ray to be careless.
    â€œSomeone should find out.”
    Meaning her. Aryl glared. “Why me?”
    Her friend merely smiled gently. You’re the one they fear.

    Games. Fine for children, Aryl fumed to herself as she drew on her second-best tunic, then yanked free the Speaker’s Pendant to lie on top. Her hair shivered itself free of dust, then fought her attempt to bind it again. The stuff was every bit a nuisance. If she could, she’d shave it off.
    The notion sent it writhing into her eyes.
    Let me. Enris was behind her, as abruptly as the sun coming from behind a cloud. Aryl closed her eyes, feeling her hair ripple and wind itself through his fingers, cling to his wrists. Highly unfair, that it obeyed his touch and not hers.
    Unfair . . . and delicious. Her bones wanted to melt. More often than not, this was where her hair escaped the net entirely, along with all responsible thought. Not this time. I have to deal with