through the driving downpour, the rel could hear Cho exclaim, “By Rock Sister!”
“What is that?” Kimber cried back, still squinting at the vacant space that had moments ago been brilliant with energy.
“I think it may be the city.”
“They capture skysplitters?”
“Apparently so,” the Elanaite said.
Before them, the ambient ash-colored murk gave no hint of the structure made real by the strike. The plain dipped and rose and continued on uninterrupted to the end of sight but there was a presence. A feeling of the hidden place pervaded Kimber, a weight towering over them, lying almost within reach.
At her side, Cho was being strange. The smaller woman had one eye tightly closed and was looking at the land askance, as though it had spoken ruefully to her. The eye tightened and widened sporadically for a moment before she lifted her arm and pointed ahead. “You can see the edges,” she said in the face of Kimber’s confused stare.
Following her example, Kimber found the dwelling of the Faer.
When not looking straight at it, she could just catch a hint of fluctuating color in the air. When she knew where to look, the outline of several structures sparkled into existence. Here and there, colored motes drifted in busy lives nearly unseen by the World without. When she blinked in surprise, it all vanished back into the trick of perspective, forcing her to squint and twist her face once more to find what she now knew was there.
“How?” she wondered aloud. The languid sisters of the Twins’ Tale and their kin had lived their lazy lives on the shore and in the caves without mention of invisible habitats suspended midair, a lapse not readily explainable by the teller’s creative bowdlerization.
Another strike shook the ground nearby. Its cracking retort deafened and the veser stomped and started. Watching the skies as though she could catch warning sight of the light before it fell, Kimber rose up to her knees and stroked the Child’s leg.
“I don’t know,” the Elanaite admitted. “But we’ll never find a way up there in this. Better to find some shelter.”
It seemed a fool’s errand on the rolling plains, but a subsequent flash illuminated slender lines like cords depending from the half-seen city to several points along the green tract. Bre’et either refused or was incapable of crawling but hunched in beleaguered accordance to Cho’s imperative that they all stay low. Cho’s beast made incredible time to the anchor-point of the towline, ably pushing itself on its belly as quickly as it had when running upright. Before the rest of them were half-way across the field, it was already atop a small atoll that marked where the line met the earth. Cho ordered it to come down and when it stood and turned to comply, it lost its footing and slid down the backside, dropping out of sight just as another skyclap blasted them all closer to permanent deafness.
They made it around to the far side of the hill, which proved to be an unnatural formation, hollowed out and open here where Kipi squatted under the overhanging roof. A white lip around the edge of the depression kept the wet earth from pouring in after them. It was hard to see how large the space was in the gloom, but much of it was taken up by a strange amalgam of silir poles and dimly glittering material.
Cho took a moment to investigate the contraption with poking, prodding interest before turning back to the entrance. “It’s safe enough for now. Come, even mhuron know when to come in out of the rain.”
And so did Kimber. She shook herself and rung out her hair and what was left of the uniform before squeezing past Cho and finding a seat inside the little hill house. It was low-ceilinged and claustrophobic but a terrible familiarity began to strop her nerves, stronger than both her fear of the city and her terror at the storm.
“There’s no room,” Cho contended to the veser.
Without need of divinity-given words, he made a clear statement. You will make room, his shoulder said, shoving the little woman aside.
Kimber paid little attention, merely moving around to let him pass without crushing her feet. She had known a house like this before. Her hands smoothed the dirt walls unconsciously and she breathed in the close, heavy air, rife now with animal and root smells.
“Kipi, get off,” Cho demanded, assaulted on all sides with insubordinate traveling companions. Her beast cringed and jumped off the piece of shimmery fabric it had just begun gnawing on.
Kimber lifted a hand to her face. Bre’et, crammed in the back of the little hill, nudged her shoulder and tried a tune that didn’t reach her. Her hand was brown with earth. She had the urge to rub it into her flesh.
The sudden hand on her forehead was what cold water is to a dreamer, instant and disconcerting, but effective.
Cho, able to stand straight under the low roof, had placed herself in front of Kimber, nearly nose to nose. “Hard to tell, but I think you’re paler than usual. And your face is hot. If a good meal and hot bath doesn’t fix you up, best we see a doctor in the city as well.” She sat back on her heels and cocked her head. “When was your hair cut?”
Secured to the World once again, Kimber wiped the dirty hand on her thigh and noticed there was almost no fabric left on it. The other hand ruffled the ragged handiwork of the decorated mother. “In the grass,” she said truthfully. “One of the monsters,” she added in a half-evasion that made her feel like a horrific ingrate.
“A close call,” Cho commented. “It should have cleanly cut the top off your head. The Twins must have intervened on your behalf.”
Unwilling to agree or deny, Kimber shrugged into the silence. Cho conceded her stare and turned back to the thing taking up most of the room in the bunker. “Don’t know what to make of this,” she muttered, pulling on the largest piece of material. The machination squeaked and swung on a trackline that was fixed into the ceiling.
Kimber slunk over on hands and knees, ignoring Bre’et’s protests for the moment. She put a hand on one of the poles and tried to understand at least how the fabric was attached, as the purpose of the whole thing seemed far beyond her comprehension. “It’s so smooth and cold.”
“The supports are all metal,” Cho said, squeezing farther into the collection to investigate the towline’s connection.
“What’s medel?”
“Metal,” Cho repeated. She spun a pair of round pieces that sat in a little box on the thin cord. They whirred with a high tone then slowed into silence. “All the big Mounts have a mining operation, but nothing can be done with it. Too hard to carve, breaks all our tools. Watch.” She took one of the thinnest rods, no thicker than a finger, in two hands and strained but it would not break.
Another skysplitter lit the dugout and reflected off the device’s shiny surfaces. The whole structure rattled in concert with the crash.
“Do you give it to the Faer then?” Kimber asked.
This time, Cho’s laugh was harsher, more like the one Kimber had held in check. “Elanaites do not give things away, rel. The Caravaners trade it with the Fallen Star’s people. They must trade the Faer for their medicines.”
“They are good healers?”
It was suddenly so quiet that Kimber thought another skyclap had come and left her completely
