by Martha Wells
Moon twisted around, spotted the shapes outlined against the sunsailer’s lights. He snarled, “Chime, stay here, River, Root, get in the air!”
Moon launched himself off the wall, veered away as River did the same. Root went too low and almost ended up in the water, then flapped his way to an unsteady recovery at the last moment.
Moon flapped upward. The first group of dakti shot toward River and Root. Their night vision must be dazzled by the distance-lights, and they hadn’t seen Moon, his dark scales fading into the night. He waited until they bunched up, nearly on top of River, and then hit them from above.
Dakti shrieked and tried to scatter as Moon tore through them and slashed their wings, slapping them out of the air. River slammed through a knot of survivors who tried to regroup and Root came up from below to tear through three stragglers.
Chasing stray dakti, keeping them away from the escarpment, Moon rapidly lost track of time. Suddenly he was circling, looking for prey and finding none in sight. The sunsailer still held its own, closer to the escarpment than it had been but not impaled on any rocks. The Kishan had managed to turn one of their weapons to point down over the side. The fire bundles thumped down into the water, glowed under the waves like some strange sea creature, then went out, but it was working. The huge sealings who had managed to get close stayed back from the hull, thrashing angrily in the water.
Moon gained some more altitude, trying to get a look at the situation further out. He saw Jade and the female warriors circling, driving off or killing the dakti who darted at them.
A small number of dakti were the only ones trying to get to the sunsailer, because most of the other Fell were attacking each other.
Moon stared, trying to make sense of it. He saw distinct swarms of dakti, striking at each other and falling back. Rulers flicked back and forth, darting at each other. Near the beach, three kethel fought in a confusing mass of wings and tails. Another dead one lay in the waves, next to the one that had been killed last night. Taking advantage of the situation, Stone dove on one of the sealings, snatched it up in his claws, and flung it away across the water. What the shit is going on? Moon thought.
Movement in the water caught his eye and he swung around, but it was Bramble, just pulling herself up onto the docking platform. She ran over to the pillars, studying them in the light of a glowing sea-weed clump Merit must have made for her. Moon growled under his breath at the danger she was putting herself in. But he realized that while Delin and Chime and Merit had all made extensive drawings of the symbols, it was all sitting back on the ship, because Moon and Jade hadn’t given them any time to go get it. Bramble must have needed to check on what exactly was carved into the pillars.
A group of dakti came in low over the water, past the bow of the sunsailer, and River and Root dove for them. Moon hung back, waiting to see if it was a distraction. But the Fell fighting with each other near the island couldn’t be a distraction. Not unless it was the dumbest distraction anyone had ever thought of in the long and varied history of the Three Worlds.
Then Moon saw a dark shape swoop on Bramble. He dove, pulled in his wings and arrowed down. Closer, he saw it was a ruler, and it had her pinned to the dock platform. Moon had never been blind with rage, the way he had heard some groundlings describe it. He had been so consumed with killing that it blotted out all rational thought, and that was what he was now.
He snapped out his wings at the last moment to retain control over the strike and slammed into the ruler. He knocked the ruler away from Bramble and down onto the stone dock. They slid a good twenty paces, the ruler on the bottom. Moon reached to tear the stunned ruler’s throat out. Then a voice behind him called, “Let him go!”
He twisted around. Another ruler gripped Bramble’s shoulders. Then he saw it wasn’t a ruler; it was the half-Fell queen.
She had the Fell crest and the Raksuran spines like Shade, Moon’s half-Fell half-clutchmate, and her scales were matte black, like a ruler, like a Raksuran consort. The light from the ship caught a reflection off a web pattern of contrasting scales, like a queen’s. Her voice harsh, speaking Altanic, she said, “You let him go, I let her go.”
Moon, now terrified as well as enraged, was paralyzed for an instant. If I let him go, he’ll kill me and she’ll kill Bramble. You couldn’t bargain like this with Fell, you couldn’t. Fell lied like it was breathing, they didn’t see any other living thing as sentient.
Then the Fell queen pushed Bramble away. Bramble staggered, then scrambled out of reach, toward Moon.
Moon, almost by reflex, dragged the ruler upright and shoved him away. The ruler staggered, then ran to the queen.
Bramble reached Moon’s side, panting, wild-eyed.
The queen caught the ruler around the waist and leapt into the air. Moon shoved Bramble behind him and spun to watch the queen, certain it was a trick. But she spread her wings, caught the wind, and vanished into the night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bramble choked on her first attempt to speak, then managed to gasp, “So what was that?”
“I don’t know. Are you all right?” Gripping her shoulder, Moon could feel her trembling.
“Sure.” Bramble wiped an arm across her face. “I need to get back to Delin and Merit.”
“Why’d you come over here?” Moon picked her up and she clung to his collar flanges. “For the symbols?”
“Yes.” She tightened her grip as Moon leapt into the air. “Delin didn’t have a chance to bring his notes and he couldn’t remember the different ways they were all pointing and I wasn’t sure which ones he was trying to remember.”
Moon landed on the top of the pillar and gauged the distance to the cliff wall. From this angle he saw Merit and Delin, huddled on the ledge, examining something. Merit had made several clumps of vegetation and sea wrack glow, and there was just enough light to make out their shapes. Chime had climbed up about thirty paces and clung to the wall.
Moon crouched low, and Bramble tucked her head down. He pushed off as hard as he could, flapped once for stability and distance, and hit the side of the cliff. He slid down a little, getting a close look at the coral substance covering the rock as it cracked and fragmented under his weight. His claws caught hold and he started to climb toward Chime.
As Moon reached him, Chime scraped at the rock, exposing more carved symbols in the light of a clump of moss he had jammed into a crevice. “Any luck?” Moon asked.
“Not so far.” Chime peered at him. “You’ve got Bramble?”
“I almost got eaten by Fell,” Bramble informed him. “I’m climbing down, I need to tell Delin which symbols.”
“What?” Distracted, Chime stared at her as she transferred her grip from Moon to the rock face and started down.
“The half-Fell queen is out here,” Moon said. From the yelling below at Bramble’s reappearance, it was obvious that her decision to jump in the water and swim to the dock hadn’t been approved by Merit or Delin.
Chime groaned with dismay, and went back to scraping at the coral growth.
Moon half-twisted around so he could watch their backs, holding on with one hand. From the sunsailer, he heard metal creak and groan under the strain. He asked, “What are you looking for?”
It was a vague question under the circumstances, but Chime answered, “Merit said there was a good chance the door doesn’t open from the outside, because when the city was alive, someone would always be there to open it for visitors. They wouldn’t want just anybody to be able to get in.”
Moon saw movement in the air near the sunsailer, a dark shape, more than one dark shape, just on the edge of the light. Then a blue figure flashed past and hit the dark shape in midair. He gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to fling himself off the rock and join the fight. “That’s not encouraging.”
“No, but Bramble said nobody leaves a place like this and thinks they aren’t coming back. Like the colony tree. So if there wasn’t already a way to open it from the outside, they would
have made one.”
“Maybe they just used magic,” Moon said. Looking past the bow of the sunsailer, he saw the distance-lights fall on a row of giant sealings, the massive bodies curving in toward them. A Kishan weapon fired, light blossomed in the air, and a kethel screamed. It was a chance, he thought, we had to take it. But they weren’t going to figure this out in time, if there was a way to figure it out at all. Some of the warriors and the Arbora might escape if they could get to the island and dig in . . .
Exasperated, Chime was saying, “Well, Moon, that’s a possibility of course but there’s absolutely no point in assuming that—”
Then Merit yelled, “It’s here!”
Chime hissed and half-climbed and half-slid down the wall. Moon dropped after him.
Delin and the two Arbora crouched on the ledge. Merit held up a clump of wet sea wrack spelled for light, illuminating some still barely visible chipped and cracked carvings. Moon swung down beside Chime on the ledge. He had no idea what they were all staring at. He said, “How do you know that’s it?”
Merit said breathlessly, “It’s the same symbols on those pillars, the ones we think meant ‘opening.’ They’re around this hole, and we think it’s like the hole in the center of the flower-thing at the forerunner city.”
Bramble turned to him, her expression elated. “There’s old damage, like turns ago someone dug at it, trying to get in.”
Delin urgently motioned Chime closer. “Chime, you try it. You know about it from the other city.”
Moon thought they had all lost their minds. It didn’t look anything like the flower-thing that had guarded the entrance to the underwater forerunner city. It looked like a hole in the rock face, possibly dug by one of the worm-like coral creatures who had infested the cliff wall.
Chime slipped past Merit and Bramble, splashing in the water lapping over the ledge. He tried to peer into the hole. “Can’t see anything, and there’s no way to get a light down there without blocking it. Anybody have a stick, or do we have to send someone to the boat?”
Delin dug through the satchel slung over his shoulder. “Try this.” He handed Chime a long thin metal rod with a hook on the end. “I confess I brought it with this possibility in mind.”
Moon hissed under his breath. The sealings were closer to the sunsailer and he couldn’t see any Raksura in the air. He couldn’t see any Fell in the air either, which could be fear of the Kishan weapons or the knowledge that the sealings were about to do their work for them.
Chime took the rod and inserted it into the hole. Moon held his breath. After a long moment, Chime hissed and pulled the rod out. “There’s no catch in there.”
Delin took the rod back. Chime planted both hands on either side of the hole and leaned on the rock, muttering, “This has to be it.”
It didn’t have to be it. This was a very old city, and they had always known it might have nothing to do with the forerunners. That Callumkal might be wrong and Vendoin right, that it was a foundation builder city. Even if it had been forerunner, that didn’t mean it would open the same way as the other city. And there were two Arbora and a groundling here and Moon and Chime could only save two of them when the sunsailer sank, and he had no idea where Jade and Stone and the others were.
Then Chime leaned into the wall, pressing his cheek against it. He said, “Oh, wait. I hear something.”
“Hear or ‘hear,’” Bramble asked, her claws flexing nervously.
“It’s like . . .” Chime’s voice was barely audible over the wind and the growing rush of sealings moving through the water. “. . . breaking rock, someone, something breaking . . . I don’t think it’s forerunner, I think it’s something else . . .”
The Arbora froze. Moon stared, then realized Chime’s left hand was half atop one of the symbols. There was a duplicate of that symbol on the other side. Moon nudged Merit and pointed.
Merit twitched in realization and carefully reached to move Chime’s left hand all the way onto the symbol. His claws clicked against the rock. “The Fell are wrong,” Chime said clearly.
Merit waved urgently at Bramble. Her teeth bared, she gently moved Chime’s right hand all the way onto the symbol on that side. Then Chime said, “Oh, Moon was right, it is magic.”
The cliff cracked and shuddered underfoot. Moon clung to the rock with his claws and caught Merit before he fell backward off the ledge. Bramble grabbed Delin. Broken rock and coral fragments rained down on their heads and the water below the ledge dropped with a gurgling whoosh. Then the cliff slowly, ponderously, started to swing inward.
Moon clung to the rock and to Merit, equal parts astonished and appalled. It wasn’t the whole cliff, it was a large section of it, at least a hundred paces wide and almost as tall. Bramble had said the door was big enough to get the sunsailer through, but Moon hadn’t thought it would be this big.
The door swung in toward a great dark tunnel in the escarpment, a channel in the bottom rapidly filling with water from the sea. Inside it was as dark as an underground cavern, the air flowing out of it stale and tinged with salt and a faint scent of plant rot.
“The sunsailer,” Delin said, his voice faint. He stared into the darkness, wide-eyed. “They must come in, before the Fell . . .”
Moon had never seen Delin this overcome before and he was fairly sure he didn’t like it. Bramble said, “Chime, can you close it? Once we get the groundlings inside—”
Chime gasped, “I can barely hold it open, so yes, I think I can close it.”
“Stay here,” Moon told them all. He made sure Merit had a good grip on the rock, then moved down the ledge and leapt upward.
The wind caught him and almost sent him right through the open doorway. Moon flapped frantically, rolled, and managed to get himself under control. He flew toward the sunsailer, careful to circle around it and stay out of the distance-lights, in case any of the Kishan were a little too quick to fire. He spotted Callumkal out on the upper deck directing the weapons. And there was Jade, circling above the sunsailer, with Briar and Balm flanking her. Further out, Stone swept past.
He drew near Jade and shouted, “The door’s open! Chime’s holding it open!”
She circled around and her spines flared as she saw it. She called to the warriors, “Briar, go get Root and River! Balm, you and Song go to the Arbora!”
As the warriors shot away, Jade dropped toward the sunsailer. Moon waited to make sure Stone was headed back this way, and then followed Jade down.
They landed on the steering cabin roof. Jade said, “Tell them. I’ll keep watch.”
Moon dropped to his knees and leaned down to see through the window. Rorra held the steering lever, grimacing with the effort of keeping it steady. He knocked on the glass. She flinched, then glared at him. He pointed emphatically toward the escarpment. She leaned sideways to see around him, and her eyes widened. She mouthed something that wasn’t in Altanic and then turned back to the steering lever.
Moon pushed to his feet. “Are the Fell fighting each other out there or am I hallucinating?”
Jade said grimly, “If you’re hallucinating, then we’re all doing it with you.”
Stone passed overhead then abruptly doubled back. Moon and Jade ducked as he came in low. He shifted and dropped down onto the cabin roof. He staggered and Jade caught his arm to steady him. Stone said, “That gets a little harder every time.”
Moon swayed as the sunsailer jerked sideways. Metal groaned as it started to turn toward the escarpment. Hopefully the Fell hadn’t realized that the door in the escarpment was open. The distance-lights were pointed toward the sky and the island, and it would be hard to see the door in the dark from where most of the Fell were still flying. Hopefully all the dakti who had managed to get close were dead. He asked Stone, “Could you tell what the Fell were doing?”
Stone didn’t take his gaze off the dark sky. “It has to be two different flights—Look out!”
Moon spun around and spotted the shapes streaking past overhead. Ru
lers, at least five of them, aiming for the city’s doorway.
Moon jumped straight up into the air, almost into the chest of the first ruler. It grabbed at him and Moon ripped upward with his disemboweling claws. Jade shot past him and tore into the rulers above. Then a wash of displaced air told Moon that Stone was aloft. The rulers scattered.
Moon twisted in the air, ripping his claws free of the ruler’s stomach and shoving it away from him. It flapped unsteadily and turned back toward the island, but he didn’t have time to finish it off. He caught the wind and looked for the remaining rulers. They were about a hundred paces off the stern of the sunsailer, near the stone platform with the pillars, trying to regroup.
Jade swept down toward them and Moon tilted his wings to get above her, then they both dove in tandem.
Jade hit one and drove it straight into the ruler flying below it. Moon swerved at the last instant to land on top of another and rip its wing webbing. Stone slammed through again, knocking the three remaining rulers out of the sky. Then Moon felt the air change and knew something was about to slam into him from behind. He flared his spines.
A weight struck him, jolted him hard enough for his wings to lose the wind. He snapped them in and rolled, and heard a distinctive dakti shriek right in his ear. He felt the tug on his spines and realized the stupid miserable thing had impaled itself so deeply it couldn’t pull free.
Moon snarled and spun again, and its claws scrabbled at his back, trying to get past his spines and scales. He was going to have to take it down to the stone platform and scrape it off.
As he dove for the platform, the dakti apparently gave up on survival and yanked itself further down on his spines, reaching for his head. Moon slapped claws away from his eyes and cupped his wings, hoping the platform was where he thought it was. Then suddenly the weight was jerked away and the dakti’s angry shriek abruptly cut off.
Moon tumbled, snapped his wings in at the last instant, slammed into the stone dock, and rolled. He landed in an awkward crouch and looked up.
