by Martha Wells
“Do you think the sunsailer is still where we left it?” Chime said wearily when they paused to rest.
“I hope they haven’t done anything stupid with it,” Rorra replied. She was sitting on a step, making sure the bandages cushioning the top of her boots were still in place. “They must be searching for us by now, and for the way out.”
Delin sighed, stretching his back. “They may think we have betrayed them, and are searching for artifacts.”
Moon had already thought of that earlier. The trust between the Raksura and most of the Kishan was still fragile, and this wouldn’t help. But apparently Rorra hadn’t. She stared, surprised and offended. “Why would I betray them?”
“Because they’re so obsessed with getting answers to their questions they can’t imagine anyone feels different,” Moon said.
Rorra shook her head, still upset. “I have worked with Callumkal since I—Since I came to Kish.”
Obviously trying to console her, Root said, “Maybe they think we killed you instead.”
“I’d like to kill every wall in this stupid city,” Jade muttered. “Come on, we need to keep moving.”
They kept going up, and Moon started to wonder if they would reach the top, find an empty room, and have to start back down and try to defeat the neverending hallway again anyway. They were hoping there was a way into a different part of the city through here somewhere, but there was no guarantee of that. He thought mentioning this out loud would be more than Jade’s temper could take at the moment, so he didn’t. And he just hoped Root didn’t think of it and blurt it out.
Then he caught a scent of something different, cooler air, maybe a trace more salt. Ahead Jade’s spines flicked as she caught it too. She said, “There’s another landing up here. I think—It might—” Then she leapt ahead.
Stone took the last three stairs in one step. Lunging after them, Moon jumped up onto a landing that opened into a passage with a curved ceiling. The others crowded up behind him.
It was such a shock to see something different, they all just stood there. The glow of the spell-lights didn’t reach very far, but Rorra directed her distance-light around, revealing more carved walls and a dark space at the end of the passage.
Jade started forward cautiously. Moon tasted the air and caught more salt. There was something different, not quite fresh, but not as heavy with rock and stale water. There was a draft coming from somewhere ahead.
Moon felt the tension he had been holding in his back and shoulders ease a little. Whatever happened, at least they weren’t in a box-trap at the top of the stairs.
“How far up are we?” Delin asked softly.
Bramble answered, “Not near the top. We’re well above the sea, though.”
“And deep inside the rock,” Chime added. His spines twitched uncomfortably. “The city’s heart?”
Bramble drew breath and Jade said, “Let’s not speculate.” She started forward. “Chime, if you get any sense of something—”
“I’ll say so right away,” Chime assured her.
“Feel free to yell,” Moon murmured. Chime moved a spine in assent.
As they moved through the passage, the lights revealed stone shelves built out from the walls, though their placement seemed random and they were all empty. So did they store things here? Moon wondered. Again, it was hard to know what something might be meant for when you didn’t know what the people who had built it looked like.
The lights started to reveal glimpses of the chamber ahead. Moon was expecting carved stone and emptiness; it was all they had seen so far. But the lights glinted off broken ceramic and smashed fragments of stone. Rorra pulled the distance-light off her shoulder strap and held it up. Jade said, “So something else got here before we did.”
The chamber had apparently held a number of objects on carved stone plinths of various heights. The plinths had been overturned and most smashed, and all that was left of the objects was a mix of intriguing debris: broken crystal and pottery of all different colors, stained with mud and mold, and small scattered pieces of bright metal.
Delin groaned. “This is disappointing.” He sighed heavily. “I will hate to tell Callumkal of this.”
Stone stepped forward, picked his way carefully through the room. Moon followed with the others. Rorra’s light showed a doorway on the far side, so hopefully they could keep going until they found a stairwell down, or the source of that draft. His foot brushed something soft, and he nudged it cautiously with his claws. It was a pile of some disintegrating substance, with folds as thin as an insect’s wing. “This was fabric, maybe?”
Chime crouched over another moldy pile, studying it closely, holding his spell-lighted cup almost on top of it. “I see incised markings. I think these were books.”
Delin made a pained noise and clapped a hand over his eyes. Moon sympathized. And they didn’t even have anyone like Vendoin here, to tell them if there was writing on the walls that explained what these ruined objects were for.
Stone had almost reached the doorway. Normally Stone liked to poke through remnants like these, the abandoned remains of strange people, but now the path ahead seemed to hold all his attention. “This isn’t good. This is salt mud. It came from the sea bottom.”
That stopped Moon in his tracks. It couldn’t be a flood, not so far up in the escarpment. “So what’s it doing all the way up here?”
“Odd.” Bramble twitched, shedding nervous energy. “There wasn’t any mud in the stairwell.”
“Yes.” Rorra pivoted, shining her light over the walls. “Something got in here. But the mud is all dry, I think, so it wasn’t recent.”
Bramble nodded agreement. “And that’s a relief—Root, what have you got?”
Moon turned. Root stood near the center of the chamber, holding something of dull silver-colored metal that was shaped like a cage or a frame for a piece of glass or crystal inside. Root said, “This is pretty. We should take it.”
There was a moment of startled silence. Moon felt his spines prickle uneasily. They had no reason to suspect anything was wrong but . . . Moon thought something was very wrong. It was like the air in the room had changed. Chime said, “Uh . . . I don’t feel anything, but . . .”
“I feel something,” Stone said, and his tone made all the warriors twitch. Though Root seemed not to notice. “I feel anger. Root, put it down.”
“But the groundlings are going to take things,” Root said, not looking up. “Why can’t we take this?”
Watching warily, Delin said, “I would not recommend it. If it is a compulsion, like the call that drew groundlings and Fell to the forerunner city . . . Root, put the object down.”
Root ignored him, an extremely un-Root-like thing to do. Frustration and fear in her voice, Song said, “Root, you heard Stone, put it down!”
Moon took a step closer, wondering if he could knock the object out of Root’s hands without touching it.
“Root,” Jade said, and Moon felt the tug on his own heart. It was the queen’s power, the connection between her and all the court. He knew he must only be sensing the edge of it; all Jade’s concentration, sharpened by fear for his safety, was directed at Root. “Root, put it down.”
Root’s head jerked up and he stared at her, startled, his spines drooping. Then he looked at the thing in his hands and set it on the nearest broken plinth. He said, “That was weird. Why did I want that?”
Moon hissed in relief. There was a nervous flutter of spines around the room. Stone’s body still radiated tension. Jade said, “Root, come here. Everyone out, come on, this way.”
Root took a step forward and Moon moved, hooked his arm and pulled him away from the plinth. Chime and Song hurried to reach Jade and Stone, with Bramble taking a wide path around the plinth. Rorra, ever practical, used her pack to lift off the floor, picked up Delin, and navigated them both over the debris and down to the door beside Jade. Briar came last, shepherding Bramble ahead of her.
The passage past the room
was wider but longer, and Moon could feel more moving air. He was still holding onto Root’s arm, and Root whispered, “Moon, I don’t know what happened. Am I in trouble?”
“Yes,” Chime snapped. “If that was the thing the trap was protecting, it’s dangerous.”
“I’m talking to the consort, not you,” Root said, sounding more like his normal self.
“No more trouble than usual,” Moon said. He hoped so. They might have just averted a disaster.
“Do we tell Callumkal about this?” Rorra asked Delin. Moon noted she hadn’t switched to Kedaic, which meant she didn’t care if the Raksura understood her. “If it’s dangerous, I’m reluctant.”
Delin said, “First we must escape this city, and the Fell. Perhaps they have followed the Kish to this city, believing it to be forerunner, and will leave it when we do. If so, Callumkal and the others will wish to return and examine this place in more detail. I also . . .” He hesitated, and then sighed. “This is a long-winded way of saying ‘I don’t know.’”
Moon didn’t know either. The silver and crystal object was the only thing in the shattered room that had stood out, and it had been near the plinth left of the center. Whatever had destroyed the books and other objects hadn’t taken it, but then maybe whatever had dragged that sea bottom mud up here wasn’t sentient, and had just been looking for food. If that thing is what the Fell want ... The Fell queen had seemed to imply that it was something specific, that the Fell weren’t just chasing rumors of power associated with ancient ruined cities. But then how did they know it was in here? Unless Callumkal and the other Kishan had known, and had kept the knowledge from Rorra, and the Fell had discovered it from them somehow.
“There’s dried mud on this floor,” Stone said. Moon could feel it underfoot, but just as a slight gritty texture. Stone was in his groundling form and the skin on the bottoms of Raksuran feet was tough, but still more sensitive than scales.
Bramble stopped to examine the mud on her foot claws. “It’s got to be turns old. Doesn’t it?”
“Doesn’t mean what brought it in isn’t still here,” Stone said.
“We know waterlings can get in here,” Moon said. You would think they would stay in the lower part of the city, in the canals, but maybe some had gotten curious. “If they can get in, we can get out.”
The passage slanted toward the left, and they passed several smaller rooms, the floors covered in layers of dried mud but empty of debris. Chime said, “I’m still afraid we’re going to turn a corner and there’s going to be . . . one of those things.”
“I think if we were going to find one, it was going to be in that room,” Jade said. She glanced back and Root’s spines drooped again.
Then Stone said, “Wait.”
Everyone stopped. Moon tasted the air and caught a trace of rotting sea wrack. Stone turned to Jade. “It’s close.”
She tilted her head to listen. Moon couldn’t hear anything from ahead. But the draft felt stronger. Jade said, “Stay here.”
Moon stepped past Chime and Bramble, just as Stone drew breath to speak. Jade said, “I was talking to the consorts, too.”
Stone subsided with an annoyed hiss. Moon managed not to object as Jade started ahead down the passage, a single spell-light to guide her. As the passage curved to the left, her light disappeared.
Stone tasted the air again, his head tilted to listen. Moon glanced back at the others, their worried expressions and the tired angle of everyone’s spines. Delin’s face was drawn and Rorra seemed more gray than she had before. He didn’t think it was a good sign. Chime leaned against the wall, Bramble rested her head on Song’s shoulder, her eyes half-closed. Briar was last behind Root and Song, keeping a wary watch back down the passage. They needed rest and more substantial food than the rations in their packs. They needed to not be trapped in this endless maze.
The movement of air in the passage was the only thing to signal Jade’s return; she had shoved her light into her pack. Moon saw her expression and the grim set of her spines and knew things had just gotten even worse. Her voice low, she said to Moon and Stone, “Something is getting in and out of this place, but I’m not sure we’re going to be able to.”
Lying on his belly, Moon looked over the edge of the air shaft. He swallowed back a hiss. Yes, it’s worse.
They had left the others and he and Stone had followed Jade as the passage narrowed and they began to see faint natural light ahead. The passage met a large vertical shaft, with a little light falling down it that must originate at the top of the escarpment and the crystal-sealed portion of the city. From the quality and scent of the air, it wasn’t open to the outside. But below this level, the shaft was occupied.
The inhabitants clung to the sides of the shaft, and at first Moon could only see thick, rough, scaled bodies of silver and blue, glowing with prickles of blue light, like burning coals buried in their flesh. And claws, like the kind crabs and shellfish had, big bulky razor-sharp things on the ends of their limbs. And there were a lot of limbs, some with hand-like structures with smaller claws, which they used to hook themselves to the wall. As Moon watched, an eyeless head lifted up and yawned, and revealed that the distended jaw was full of a myriad of needle-like teeth. These must be the creatures who had explored these rooms, destroyed the objects left behind. Fortunately, they all seemed to be asleep, or drowsing. The few who were moving were languid and seemed barely aware.
Moon wriggled silently back from the edge to where Jade and Stone waited. They retreated farther down the passage, out of earshot of the air shaft’s occupants, and Moon said softly, “At least we know there’s no neverending hallway trap at the bottom of that shaft. They have to be eating something.”
Stone said, “They’re probably from the ocean. Eyeless waterlings don’t live in seas this shallow.”
Moon nodded. “They must have washed up here in storms, and got in through the passages that are letting the water in. They probably only go out at night.”
Jade hissed impatiently. “I really don’t care how they got in, or what they do when they aren’t blocking our way out. How do we get down past them?”
“We don’t,” Stone told her. “We go up. If there’s one air shaft, there’s more. Before they sealed off the top of the city, that’s how they kept the air moving through here.”
“We have to go while it’s still daylight,” Moon added. “They probably start moving around at dark. There’s a chance they might clear out and go to some other part of the city, or go outside, but we just can’t risk it.”
“That makes sense.” Jade dropped her spines in chagrin. “I should have thought of that.”
“That’s why you have us,” Moon said, and thought, we really need to get out of here. They were all getting too exhausted to think straight. Jade had told the others to eat and rest while they were waiting, but that wasn’t going to be enough. And it was never good to stay too long in enclosed spaces with no fresh air. If this place had been originally designed to be ventilated from the outside, then having all those openings closed off wasn’t helping.
Jade squeezed his wrist. “Right. I’ll go up and see if I can find an opening to another level.”
“Let me do it,” Moon said, keeping his voice casual. The image of Jade slipping and falling because she was too tired to climb made his chest constrict. “This is why you brought me.”
Jade said, wryly, “I brought you for sex.”
“Ha.” It was good she could still joke but he hoped it didn’t mean she was getting loopy. “Sex and climbing walls.”
Stone said, “Jade, he’s right. The warriors are exhausted, and if the connecting passages are this size, I can’t fit into them. We can’t risk losing the queen.”
Jade growled under her breath. “I don’t care if he’s right, I’m going. You two get ready because if I wake the waterlings it’s not going to matter.”
Moon drew breath to argue and Stone punched him in the chest. Jade, already turning to creep back to the
edge of the shaft, didn’t see. Rubbing the injured spot, Moon waited until she was out of earshot to whisper, “You said I was right!”
“She doesn’t need an argument right now. Neither do I,” Stone said pointedly.
“Fine.” One reason to send someone ahead was that they needed to know if moving into the shaft would rouse the waterlings. If it did, it would be very, very bad. “Why don’t you go back to the others and get ready to die horribly when the waterlings swarm us?”
“Why don’t I,” Stone said, and turned back down the passage.
Moving quietly, Moon went to the edge of the shaft. Jade had slipped out to cling to the side and cautiously moved upward. The rock was heavily pitted and made for easy climbing. It was just the sleeping waterlings that were the problem.
Moon gripped the edge and leaned out, trying to see if there was an opening to another passage. The light from above was faint, but it was just enough to throw shadows. And there, about fifty paces up and on the far side of the shaft, was a door-sized square shadow.
Jade had seen it too and climbed toward it slowly, obviously being careful not to make any noise louder than the gusty exhalations of the sleeping waterlings. Like sealings, they probably weren’t scent hunters, and hopefully their senses weren’t as acute out of the water as in it.
Jade reached the door and swung inside, and Moon retreated back down the passage. He let his breath out in relief and scrubbed his face with the heels of his hands. Time passed excruciatingly slowly, then Jade climbed back inside the passage so suddenly and silently Moon flinched. She drew him further back, and said quietly, “That’s it. It leads to an open hall with several stairwells heading down. There were other openings farther up, but the less time we spend in that shaft the better.”
It was good news, until Jade stumbled and caught Moon’s arm to steady herself. When she pulled away he caught her wrist and said, “On the boat, did you sleep? Don’t lie.”
