Riders of the Storm by Julie E. Czerneda Read Free Book Online Page A

returned to nest in their hillside burrows. Scattered Om’ray bones often greeted those bringing the latest to join them.
    But no Om’ray would discard objects, or even wearable clothing, with their dead. This Om’ray must have died away from his Clan. There was only one kind who could. An unChosen on Passage.
    A fellow fool.
    A little digging unearthed more bones, most shattered or split. Enris was about to stop when he touched a softness among the fragments. It was a bag, its brittle material crumbling as he pulled it free.
    Most of the contents fell apart as well, becoming flakes and fine powder, easily taken by the wind. He was left with two items. The first was a metal box the size of his smallest finger. He pressed its two longer sides together and a tiny, hot flame obediently bloomed from one end.
    An ordinary firebox.
    Enris pulled out his. The two were identical, save for the discoloration of age and dirt. Oud, as if he needed more proof the land between Grona and Rayna was theirs. He tucked both away.
    The second item was as strange as the ’box was familiar: a featureless wafer that fit within the palm of his hand. It was thin but solid, with five unequal sides. Unlike metal, it didn’t warm as he held it, instead stealing heat from his skin. The material was clear; it might have been cut from the window of a Cloisters, if that were possible. Unlike his other finds, the wafer glittered as if new. Baffled, he put it in the pouch with the fireboxes. It would be pretty, made into an ornament. When he had time to make things for their beauty again.
    The grayed bones weren’t fresh leavings. Enris frowned. The wood was still strong and whole. Despite its finish, it would have rotted quickly in hot, humid Yena; perhaps the coolness of the mountainside preserved it, the way it had the reshaped road and landscape. Though even in Tuana, such bared soil would be carpeted by tall, waving nost or other hardy plants within a harvest. Despite the little mountain streams and dusting of snow, he guessed this was a dry place. No wonder it was barren.
    Bones that weren’t fresh. Intact wood. What else did he have? The Oud metal. Something he’d believed impervious; the darkened blade in his pack was proof it wasn’t, though he’d never tried leaving the precious stuff outside on the ground.
    Old. But how old?
    Enris grinned. Other Om’ray wouldn’t care. What was now, had always been. After all, the Agreement among Cersi’s three races was built on things staying as they were. He wouldn’t have cared before he met the strangers, with their preoccupation with the long-buried and longer past. But he’d seen with his own eyes the incredible structures from another time that they’d freed from a cliff face.
    Things had been different once.
    Faced now with his own puzzle, he began to see the fascination. Maybe he should keep digging. If this had been an Om’ray on Passage, there would be a metal token with the bones, twin to one Enris kept in a pocket. The tokens granted the bearer the freedom to trespass anywhere on Cersi.
    He grimaced. Maybe not anywhere, after his experience with that crazed Oud in its tunnels. Instead of leaving him be, the creature had taken his original token from him. He owed the one he carried now to Yena’s paranoid Council.
    A token with the bones would make this a normal, if lonely, death—an expected hazard facing those who left their own Clan to seek a Chooser in another. If there was no token…
    Enris gave himself a shake, then retied his coat to his pack with unnecessary force, almost snapping the tie. His imagination wasn’t usually out of control. It was this place. What was he doing here? Of course there was a token. No need to waste precious time digging for what had to be there. He stood, settling the pack over his shoulders. A Clan couldn’t abandon one of its own, any more than a member could stray too far. There