Ashes and Rain: Sequel to Khe (The Ahsenthe Cycle Book 2) Read online

  I thought I heard Larta puffing, running up. Jonton and I rolled on the ground, shifting direction, and tumbled into a new room — dirt floor, but stone walls, not like the other rooms. I held Jonton down, pinning her shoulders to the dirt

  I felt a soft knee in my back, Larta nudging me aside. I wished again that my spots would light — to show Larta how happy I was to see she was fine. She grabbed Jonton by the arm and pulled her to her feet. In Larta’s free hand was the stunner, pointed at Jonton.

  I turned, and gasped at the room.

  It was the size of the huge receiving room in Research Center Three. I thought maybe we were directly under that room, this one a mirror space — but that room, the one above, held furniture and open space.

  This room held floating faces.

  “What is this place?” Larta asked. Her voice quivered in a way I’d never heard from her before. Bold Larta, as shaken as I was.

  The faces floated in three distinct areas, as if they didn’t belong together, but they were all doumanas and males. The faces were slightly transparent, not like on a visionstage where you’d swear you could touch the doumana speaking, and it was only faces, not whole bodies — face after face, suspended in the air like hanging balls. They made my stomach queasy, and yet I couldn’t help searching for a face that was familiar. None were.

  I sensed Larta come up next to me, warmth radiating from her skin from the run. The blood, where Jonton had bitten her, had stopped flowing and was starting to dry. She held Jonton tight by the arm, though the orindle seemed in no mood to run.

  “I know her,” Larta said.

  “Who?”

  She jutted her chin toward one of the floating faces. “She lives in Chimbalay. I don’t know her well. I think her name is Gunt. She’s a technician at Presentation House.” Larta took another step forward, pulling Jonton with her. “I know him, too. He was a male I didn’t choose at my first Resonance. He tried hard, though.”

  I stared at the faces, an idea crystallizing in my mind. I wanted to touch them, but was afraid to, as if they might pop like bubbles in boiling water. “I think I know what this is. We keep accounts like this of the plants and preslets at Lunge. It’s a breeding record.”

  “Very good, Khe,” Jonton said.

  Irritation churned in me at her tone, but I kept silent. Larta’s annoyance was more obvious, glowing brown-black on her neck. It was only her training as a guardian, I supposed, that kept Larta from doing something she’d regret.

  “I know how it works,” Jonton said. “Would you like to see who came before you? Who you made?”

  “I’d like to see you get us out of here,” Larta said, her patience clearly running as thin as water now.

  I’d never thought about how I came to be. Two unknown soumyo had mated; I had come from the egg they’d made. I had wondered if my offspring might have inherited some of my grower’s talent, but there was no way to know, so I’d not dwelled on the question. Now, I did want to know. Desperately.

  “Can you show me?” I asked Jonton.

  She smiled and took a tentative step away from Larta, who reluctantly let her.

  “Like this,” Jonton said, moving her hands in a complicated rhythm over a green panel. “We’ll find you, shall we? Khe of Lunge commune.”

  Something in the room clicked and whirred. My face came up, small as a seed at first, then growing to life-sized. It chilled me to see it. To one side were two other faces, one doumana, one male. Nice enough looking, both with skin the same shade as mine, but strangers. They meant nothing to me. On the other side, another face came up. Male. His eyes were the same shape and color as mine. I didn’t know what the two sides meant. Once we emerge, we look the same through our lifetimes. The male and female on one side could be my progenitors or my offspring. The male on the other side could be either as well. I gazed at the faces — no different than seeing a stranger’s face on the streets of Chimbalay. A fourth face came up.

  “Trah!” Larta’s voice rang with surprise.

  My heart banged in my chest. I stepped toward the face I knew so well.

  Nez.

  “If this is a breeding record,” Larta said, “then Nez is your offspring.”

  Heat flashed through me. I knew what Larta said was true. Perhaps I’d already known it. The bond I felt with Nez was different from what I felt with any of my other sisters, stronger. The gold cord I sometimes saw reaching from one of us to the other — I’d never seen that with anyone else.

  “The lumani tracked everything,” Jonton said. “Generation after generation, every mating. They tracked the eggs. When hatchlings left the egg, the lumani used the records to decide where to place them. They thought that looking at the progenitors could predict what a doumana or male would be good at in their lives.”

  I knew the lumani saw us as some grand experiment, but this shook me to my core. The lumani had made us, made me, made every single doumana and male then alive what they were. None of what had happened after their destruction was my fault. It simply was what we were — what they had made us. Some were brave, and some fearful, and some wanted nothing more than to be left with their sisters to do their work. And some wanted power so great that it rivaled the lumani themselves.

  The room felt suddenly close, unstable — as though the ceiling might crash down at any moment.

  Nez was my offspring.

  “Do you know the way out?” I asked Jonton.

  “I know every secret of Research Center Three. Every secret of the Powers.”

  Larta jerked the orindle’s arm — fed up, I thought, as I was, with Jonton’s brags. “Come on. Show us.”

  Jonton stood her ground. “There’s something else here Khe might like to know about.”

  “Just Khe?” Larta said.

  “In this case.” Jonton stared at me, her eyes focused on mine, the moments passing away, growing as stale as the air in that underground room.

  “This is a place of power,” she said.

  Larta sniffed. “The lumani had Chimbalay built for them. Yes, we know.”

  Jonton’s smile was tight. “Not The Powers, the lumani. Power. Power for The Powers, I suppose.”

  “We should leave now,” I said, a fresh nervousness pounding through me.

  “Have you never wondered why Chimbalay was built here?” Jonton asked. “It’s an odd place for a kler, wilderness all around. The nearest commune or neighboring kler is many days’ walk away. No other place is set off the way Chimbalay is, not even the nesting grounds.”

  Larta still had hold of one of Jonton’s arms. Her hand tightened slightly around it.

  “Your story better be good,” the guardian said. “I’m getting tired of being underground. I want to get out of here.”

  Jonton’s eyes tracked to where Larta’s hand was squeezing her arm, then back to me. “Chimbalay was built where it is because the lumani recognized that this is a natural power spot, a place where the magnetic energies of the planet come together and concentrate.”

  She twisted slightly, pulling away from Larta’s hold. Larta let her, but shot Jonton a look that clearly said if the orindle tried to escape she wouldn’t get far — and would be the worse for it.

  Subtle shifts, I thought — Larta so curious she was willing to give up a slice of control. The need to know thrumming in me like insects trapped in a bottle. Jonton loose, her stance like an instructor on the visionstage, her voice pitched to carry.

  “We know our planet has magnetic fields,” Jonton said. “We use them to navigate to our nesting sites. But there are also peculiarities, locations where the magnetic forces of the planet intersect and intensify. This is one of them.”

  She paused, and looked disappointed that neither Larta nor I said anything, or even moved.

  “There’s a smaller one under Lunge commune, as it happens.”

  Still neither Larta nor I spoke.

  “The Powers, the lumani,” Jonton said, “have long life spans, much longer than ours, but not as
long naturally as they managed to eke out here. They fed on electricity, but what sustained them, what gave them life, was the planet itself. They built Chimbalay where the force was strongest.”

  I nodded unconsciously, then noticed I’d done it. I’d already reasoned that, after the lumani had changed me, it was the planet that became my food and drink — that kept me alive. I always felt better with my feet on the ground. When Simanca had thrown me into the underground root cache and I’d lain in the dark for what seemed a long time, I was stronger than I had been in a while. Here, in this place, deep below the surface, I felt better and healthier than I ever remembered feeling.

  Jonton leaned toward me. “There is a place here, Khe, that sits at the heart of the junction.”

  Larta tsked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “There’ll be no trade here. No special room for Khe in exchange for letting you go, much less for letting you have whatever leadership role it is you crave.”

  Two spots lit gray-green on Jonton’s throat. “You’re taking the wrong trail, guardian. It’s not a trade I’m after. I’m an orindle, not some corentan or commune leader haggling over the price of preslets or how many seeds I’ll trade for the latest gossip. It’s not a trade I’m after. What I want is for Khe to have her time back. To live long enough to become what she will be. To be with her when it happens and after.”

  I stared at the orindle. What was Jonton really after?

  “Seems to me that’d be up to her,” Larta said. “Though I’m sure she’d like to see this place, this heart.”

  My throat closed up and I couldn’t speak, only nod. I wanted to see the room if it would truly give me back my life. But if this room did what Jonton said, why had she been so insistent that I continue Pradat’s treatments? Why not bring me there to begin with?

  I asked the questions.

  Jonton sighed. “Pradat’s treatments aren’t working.”

  Heat streamed up my breastbone. Then I saw the truth of things.

  “You counted on the treatments not working.” I said.

  “I know many, many secrets of the lumani,” Jonton said, “but I don’t know where the heart is. But you, Khe, you who are becoming lumani, perhaps you can find it.”

  My neck burned. Was I becoming lumani? Not just something in between, not something neither doumana nor lumani, but turning into the thing I hated? I dragged the back of my hand across my mouth, as though that could wipe away the fear growing in me.

  “How?” I said. “What Weast did to me, it didn’t give me the lumani’s memories, or their knowledge. All it did…” Was what? Maybe gave me some insight. Or maybe that came with the Resonance surgery that unlocked my ability to push the crops. Maybe that unlocking had brought me other things as well.

  The ability to see into Jonton’s heart.

  “You want it for yourself,” I said. “You hope it will turn back time. How could anything do that, Jonton? How could it give you years that aren’t yours to have? You’re not like me. I want back only what was stolen. You want something that was never meant to be yours.”

  She leaned toward me. “Why should we return during our thirty-fifth year? I’ve watched my sisters in their last year try not to resent what they couldn’t avoid. Watched my sisters, as vibrant and as valuable as ever, Return only because of age. What is lost to us, Khe, when our sisters are gone? What might they have discovered? What good and wonderful things might they have done? It’s wrong that we must Return simply because the world has spun a certain number of times. You, Khe, if you find the heart, you could give all your sisters — and brothers — more time to do great things.”

  I remembered Hwanta, at Lunge commune — so many years past and still her screams were fresh in my ears — crying out the creator was cruel and cheated us, to take our lives while we were still healthy and wanting to give. How could I blame Jonton for her desire? When Weast had offered me nearly twice my normal life span, I’d grabbed at it with greedy hands.

  Larta blew out a breath. “More time for the council to lead this world forward.”

  “More time for we orindles to lead.”

  The gray-green of revulsion showed on Larta’s neck, but her voice was calm. “But you will share this new wonder with all the soumyo?”

  Jonton turned to me. “It’s a room. The lumani spoke of it. I’m sure it’s here, in the caverns, but for all the time I’ve spent looking, I could never find it. But you can. For you, the room is your best hope.”

  Best hope. Jonton had no idea what would happen in that room.

  My mouth felt dry and my hands shook. I knew less than Jonton where this heart might be. She, at least, knew where it wasn’t.

  A soft rumble caught my ears. I saw that Jonton and Larta heard it, too. We’d learned what that sound meant and braced ourselves but the mad shaking we’d expected didn’t come. The ground rolled once beneath our feet, slow and gentle, like a dream, and stopped.

  Larta said something, but her words were hidden by a sound I’d never heard before — like a single raindrop quickly hitting a small hollow log over and over again, so fast that no beast could run as quickly as those drops fell. Larta’s mouth was moving, and Jonton’s to answer her. I could tell they didn’t hear what I heard. A whoosh, like a huge wind, streamed through the cavern, but there was no wind. The sound of rain on wood returned.

  An old sound joined — every kind of bird chirping, squawking, calling at the same time in thousands of voices. There were words in the chittering and squawking. Words I understood, but couldn’t say how I did — my name being called. Warmth spread through me, from the soles of my feet, climbing upward. Warmth and contentment. And knowledge. The words leading me, saying, Come, Khe. This way. Come to me.

  I stumbled out of the record room, following the voice like chasing a trail of smoke. The rain and wind sounds died away. I heard Larta behind me tsk and Jonton gasp, and two sets of footsteps rushing to catch up.

  The tiny creatures that lit the passageway glowed brighter now than before, lighting the red rocks with a white fire flowing through the walls. Larta took my arm. I shook her off, as if her touch would dampen the words I strained now to hear.

  This passage, Khe. Turn east here.

  I turned without looking and knocked over a little tower of rocks, the stones scattering. Larta cried out. Some stones must have landed on her foot. I couldn’t stop now, not even for Larta.

  The voice pulled me onward.

  Downward. Deeper and deeper into the world. The air grew cold — which was odd, since I’d seen on the visionstage how doumanas at the mining communes sweated deep underground. I followed the voice’s directions into a long passage so thin the rough walls rubbed against both my shoulders.

  There were hardly any of the glowing creatures in the dirt here. I could barely see an arm’s length in front of my eyes. Larta and Jonton were still behind me, but I heard their footsteps falter, unsure in the darkness. I hoped they’d stop following. Wherever I was being led, it seemed right that I should come alone.

  Almost there, the voice that was like thousands of chittering birds said, the mouth is soon.

  The passage walls were so tight I had to squeeze my shoulders together and twist to walk sideways. The walls crumbled away where I pushed through, dirt falling down my back and chest. Small rocks tore at my skin. The way was almost perfectly dark. My heart pounded. Commune-raised, my world was always wide open. Sweat beaded above my lips. My neck burned. I pushed on.

  The scent of sweet air told me something was changing. A few more steps, and there was nothing on my right shoulder, where the passage wall had been so tight before. I took a few more steps before turning toward the black void — the opening to another passage. The mouth, the voice had said. I blinked, nervous, and walked into the emptiness.

  As I walked the walls began to glow again from the luminescent creatures, the light growing stronger the further I went. The cavern was large enough that all my commune-sisters could have stood in it comfortably.
At the back was a rectangular metal door — the only door I’d seen since we’d left the machine room.

  I stood staring at it, hearing hard breathing behind me as Larta and Jonton squeezed their way through the last tight steps, and gasps when the wall fell away on their right. I reached out, but there was no way to open the door that I could see. Larta and Jonton came up beside me.

  “You’ve found it,” Jonton said. Her emotion spots glowed crimson in happiness.

  Larta’s neck showed blue-red with worry.

  “I can’t figure the door,” I said. “All this way, to be stopped by a door…”

  Jonton’s lips turned in a bare smile and she stepped forward. “The door is to keep the power contained.” She waved her hand over a small indentation in the dirt walls. The door clicked and then slid away, sinking sideways into the dirt wall.

  It was just a room, dirt walls like all the others, though the soil was dark, dark-red with wide swatches of black running through it. The same kind of tiny, luminous creatures that had lit our way in the rest of the cavern glowed here too. My shoulders drew up and a tremble ran across them. My skin itched, a feeling like I’d drenched myself in mud and it had tightened as it dried. My earholes buzzed and I swiped at them with my hands.

  Jonton watched me with a bland curiosity. I knew I was an experiment to her, as I’d been to the lumani. Her only desire was to see what would happen — her small hope that it would be something she could use for herself.

  I didn’t want to step into that room, not now, not ever.

  I wanted to run in, shut the door behind me, throw my head back and my arms out and soak up whatever was in there like bread in water.

  I thought of Nez. A strange concept — to know my offspring and discover a new kind of love, different and beyond what I felt for my sisters: a bond so deep it had its own color, a bond that made me desperate to see how her life turned out.