by Martha Wells
“Where’s Jade and the others?” Moon asked. He wrapped his claws around the railing. Despite the furious efforts in the steering cabin, the sunsailer drew closer to the circle of rushing water, the deck sloped more steeply.
“They’re inside, on the lower deck. Waterlings were climbing up the stern, but they left when this started. Kalam told everyone to get inside and lock the doors.” Stone asked Magrim, “You want to go inside?”
Magrim shook his head. “The crystal in the ports isn’t made for this. It’s going to break. If I’m going to drown, I’d rather do it out here than inside.”
Moon would rather do it with the other Raksura, but he wasn’t sure there was time. Then Stone said, “Delin doesn’t think we’re going to die.”
The sunsailer jerked sideways and Moon gripped the railing as he nearly slammed into Stone. The motivator jittered and sputtered. He raised his voice over the roar of water. “Does he?”
“He thinks this is happening for a reason,” Stone explained. He ducked as a huge gout of water splashed up over the decks. “He admitted it might not be a good reason.”
Then the bow dipped and the boat surged forward straight into the darkness at the center of the whirlpool.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Moon wrapped one arm around the railing and the other around Stone’s waist. He saw Stone grip the railing and grab Magrim’s arm. And then water rushed up at them.
After five heartbeats of nothing but saltwater and blind terror, the wave passed. Moon was dripping wet, salt stinging in the cuts and abrasions in his scales from the waterlings’ claws. It was dark and he was huddled against Stone’s side, tucked under his arm. He blinked water out of his eyes and looked for Magrim. He was still here too, tucked under Stone’s other arm.
The sunsailer’s distance-light swung wildly, allowing glimpses of dark curving walls, streaked with white mineral deposits and patches of mold. The light steadied, proving the operator had managed to survive, and swung to illuminate the way ahead. The sunsailer raced down a dark straight channel filled with water, which rose as the basin behind them emptied into it. Moon retrieved his scattered wits, flattened his spines to keep from cutting Stone’s arm, and said, “Delin thinks this is the way out?”
It made a strange kind of sense, at least for this place. Only one boat could take it at a time, and the lock was there to prevent others from being pulled out of the canal while the water was draining into the opening. Forcing the lock to move must have made the passage open as well.
“Right.” Stone’s voice was tight and strained. He hadn’t been as calm about this as he had pretended. “We couldn’t get all the groundlings off the boat, and there were enough waterlings to eat us all if we tried, so we decided to risk it.”
“‘We,’” Moon asked. Not that he was arguing.
“Me and Delin,” Stone admitted. “We didn’t have much of a chance to discuss it with anybody else.”
Magrim, who had been cursing steadily in Kedaic, now said in Altanic, “We must be past the wall of the escarpment by now. Perhaps the Fell won’t know where to look for us.”
He was right. Moon said, “I wonder how it goes back up?”
“That’s a good question,” Stone said.
Magrim said, “I hope it’s not jammed shut, like the lock.”
Moon glanced up at what he could see of the curved ceiling overhead and hoped so too. But the outer door on the far side of the escarpment had still worked, so he thought the chances were good. He hoped the chances were good.
Stone twisted around to look up at the steering cabin. “There’s Jade.”
Moon looked, squinting past the spray of saltwater. In the lighted cabin he could see Jade looking out the window, beside Rorra and the others working at steering the boat. He thought he could see Callumkal and Kalam in the rear of the cabin. The one thing that was clear was that Jade didn’t seem pleased to see him and Stone out here.
Moon turned back toward the dark onrushing tunnel. “We’re going to hear about this later.”
Stone leaned forward, eyes narrowed, staring toward the end of the tunnel. “Maybe.”
Some distance ahead the darkness of the tunnel gave way to something deeper and blacker, that the light couldn’t penetrate. Not a wall, Moon thought. Not a wall would be good. The image of the boat jammed up against an unmovable barrier while the tunnel filled up . . . But the tunnel wasn’t filling up. This water was going somewhere.
Then Stone said, “It’s another chamber.”
Magrim groaned.
As the end of the tunnel approached, the distance-light began to show detail. They headed toward a big cavern filled with oddly still water, and it didn’t seem to be much lower than the tunnel.
Moon braced himself against Stone as the sunsailer shot out of the tunnel and dropped a few paces. The deck jolted with bone-rattling impact and water fountained up on all sides. The thrumming ceased as the motivator cut off and the boat slewed around in a circle as Rorra and the others managed to stop its headlong progress. The distance-light swung around, frantically at first, then more methodically as nothing immediately terrible happened.
The chamber seemed circular, but water ran down the walls and Moon couldn’t see if they were stone or metal. But the light kept catching white and blue reflections off the water, the colors of whatever material was under it. And where was the water coming from?
Then the boat jolted again, and the water trembled, suddenly choppy with ripples and little disturbed waves. A window opened somewhere above and one of the Kishan yelled something in another language. “She says, ‘Look up, look up,’” Magrim translated.
The light swung upward in response and lit a ceiling of light-colored material, all in delicate folds, like the outer petals of an elaborate flower. Staring upward, Moon hissed in astonishment. “That’s forerunner.”
Stone stared. “You’re sure?”
“Yes!” This was just like the flower-shaped doorways and carvings they had seen in the underwater forerunner city. There had been nothing like this in the builders’ city.
The sunsailer jolted again, and it, the water, and whatever the water was resting on began to move upward. Moon drew a sharp breath. “Oh. Oh, I hope—” The outer door in the forerunner city had needed a forerunner, or a half-Fell half-Raksura close enough to forerunner, to open it, unless you could find and manipulate a hidden lock. If this was set up the same way . . .
Then the flower carving trembled and the petals folded back in a complex spiral. Past it was darkness, but it was the living darkness of a cloud-strewn night sky. Moon sagged against the railing, the release of tension making him weak. “No, it’s letting us out.” And it wasn’t going to dump half a sea’s worth of water on them, either. The chamber stretched all the way up to the surface.
Faintly, apparently reeling from the shock that they were going to live, Magrim asked, “You hope, what? Did you think it would crush us?”
“Nothing, just, nothing,” Moon said, feeling his spines twitching with relief.
Stone nudged him. “Climb up to the steering cabin and tell them we need to turn our lights off. We should be downwind, and if we’re far enough away from the escarpment, the Fell may miss us.”
“Right.” Moon detached himself from the railing and Stone, and made the jump up onto the next cabin roof. He crossed it, and climbed up the next level to the steering cabin.
Jade was already pushing open one of the windows. “Get in here,” she demanded.
“Tell Callumkal to tell the crew to turn off the lights, so the Fell won’t see us,” Moon said first. “Stone thinks we might be far enough away.”
Jade hissed in irritation and turned to relay this to Callumkal. Kellimdar poked his head out the window and said, “We should have thought of that.” He seemed a bit loopy from shock. “Is everyone all right out there?”
“I think so. I was with Stone and Magrim in the bow,” Moon told him. A Janderi hurried out the door at the back of the st
eering cabin and from the opposite window, Callumkal called down to the Janderan on the other side of the boat to cover their lights.
“Ah. Thank you, all of you.” Kellimdar awkwardly patted Moon’s claws, and withdrew into the cabin.
As an apology for doubting Raksura in general, Moon would take it. It was more graceful and heartfelt than some apologies he had received in the past.
The forward distance-light went out, then the two closer to the stern, then the lights in the windows along this side. The whole chamber was still moving upward, the rush of water down the sides slowing as it neared the surface. The petal door was nearly all the way open.
Jade stepped back to the window. Moon said, “So it looks like these people knew the forerunners.”
“Moon—” Jade hissed in annoyance. “Move over.”
He moved sideways along the steering cabin wall and Jade climbed out the window. She asked, “Why did you stay outside?”
“I don’t know.” Moon didn’t want to argue about it. Like Magrim, he hadn’t wanted to drown inside the boat, and he was just enough of an optimist to think there might have been some last moment way to save them all that he could have accomplished or helped with. It didn’t make a lot of sense, a good consort would have gone to huddle inside, but there it was.
Jade leaned over to look closely at him, then apparently decided to drop it. She sat back against the side of the cabin. “Well, we’re alive. And we’re downwind.”
“And the forerunners were here,” Moon said.
“That too,” Jade agreed, looking upward grimly.
They were only twenty paces below the surface now. Moon heard a couple of doors open, and two Janderan stepped out on the lower deck to get ready to operate the big fire-weapon there. Toward the stern, Balm, River, and Briar hopped up on top of the rear cabin, their spines twitching nervously.
The boat lifted up level with the surface and the water churned under them. There was Fell stench in the wind, and Moon twisted to look back toward the escarpment. It was a vast looming shape, dark against the stars of the night sky. The sunsailer was about three times the distance from it that the island had been. Watching for movement, Moon spotted a kethel wing framed against the lighter clouds, just for an instant, as it passed around the side of the escarpment. “They’re circling it,” he said. “Wonder which flight won.” He thought of the Fell queen, trading Bramble for her ruler. It was hard to remember sometimes that Fell rulers, and perhaps the progenitors, did care for each other, unlike the way they treated their dakti and kethel.
“I’m not sure it matters.” Jade leaned into the window. “Don’t start the motivator; the Fell might hear it.”
“Yes, we’ll let the current take us into the ocean.” Rorra appeared in the window. “Did the walls drop down, can you see?”
The words “into the ocean” made Moon’s spines want to twitch. He felt like they should have a much larger boat for that, maybe one as big as the island, but there wasn’t much choice. He craned his neck, trying to see if the door had closed and the chamber was sinking down again. It had filled with water to push them to the surface, and then once it closed, the water must drain away somewhere. They were lucky it still worked after all this time, but then the forerunner city’s defenses had still worked as well.
The swirling water was calming. “I think so,” Jade told Rorra.
“Then we should start to move.” Rorra pulled away from the window and went back to the steering lever.
In Raksuran, Moon said, “It’s too bad we can’t use the motivator yet, because if that crystal thing does attract Fell, the faster we get away the better.” They needed to be farther away from the escarpment than the Fell could fly in one stretch. If there were no islands out here to rest on, then the Fell wouldn’t be able to follow them.
Jade’s spines signaled grim agreement.
The boat turned gradually away from the shape of the sea-mount and toward the limitless dark where the sea met the ocean. The sails on the two central masts started to unfold, opening out like huge fans.
The scale of the escarpment was so large it was hard to tell if they were moving away from it or not, with no other landmark to measure their progress by. But after a while, Moon realized he could feel the forward movement of the boat. There was no sound but the wind, and the occasional footstep or quiet Kishan voice.
Moon wasn’t aware he had drifted off until Jade nudged him. He jerked awake and she said, “Go inside and sleep, before you fall off the boat.”
“Hah.” He managed to uncurl his cramped legs. The escarpment didn’t look any smaller, but he could tell maybe an hour or more had passed. The sky was still empty and the clouds clearing away, only a few wispy ones to obscure the stars. The boat moved faster, the current still pushing it along. “You’re the one who needs more sleep.”
“When we’re a little farther away.” Jade leaned away from the cabin wall and rolled her shoulders to ease the tension in her furled wings. “I’ll send Stone and some of the others after you. Balm and River are in better shape than the others; they can take the first watch.”
Moon climbed awkwardly inside the steering cabin. Callumkal was holding the steering lever, and Esankel, Kalam, Vendoin, and Rorra sat on the benches against the wall, drooping with exhaustion. Kalam had fallen asleep, his head on Vendoin’s armored shoulder. Keeping his voice low, Callumkal asked Moon, “Nothing in the air?”
“No. Not so far.” He hesitated, not sure he wanted to know. “Are we in the ocean now?”
Rorra stirred a little and said, “We’re in the Blue Drop, where the sea meets the ocean. At dawn, you’ll be able to see it.”
Moon didn’t ask how she knew, whether it was because she was a sealing or a navigator. He stepped out of the steering cabin into the dark passage beyond, and found his way down the stairs.
On the lowest deck, where the cabins didn’t have windows, some of the lights were still lit. All the Kish-Jandera he glimpsed through the doorways were asleep, lying on bench-beds. In their cabin, Merit and Bramble were curled up together on a bench, and Delin sat on a floor cushion, a sheaf of papers in a leather folder on his lap. He was frowning intently at the wall. As Moon came in, he blinked up at him, as if he had been so absorbed in something, he had forgotten anyone else was alive. Delin shook his head a little, and said, “All is well?”
“So far,” Moon said around a yawn. He crossed the cabin and sank down onto an empty bench, and shifted. He winced; his shoulders ached, his back ached, everything ached. The wind had dried his scales, so at least there was no water to transfer to his clothes. But the salt made his skin itch. “Did you see the flower door? The forerunners must have made that whole passage for the builders.”
Delin still seemed distracted. “Yes, they were obviously allies. It is perhaps not as unexpected as we supposed.”
Moon nodded toward the papers. “What are you reading?”
Delin patted the papers. “Vendoin had some translations I wish to look at.” He pushed to his feet. “She is still in the steering cabin?”
Moon nodded, and lay down on his side. Delin said, “I will take it back to her room, then.”
Moon yawned again. “Did she figure out what the inscription on the wall said, the one up on the arch where we first came into the city?”
Delin paused in the doorway. “It said, ‘If eyes fall on this, and no one is here to greet you, then we have failed. Yet you exist, so our failure is not complete.’”
Delin slipped out while Moon was still trying to understand that. He fell asleep, wondering why Delin had chosen a time when everyone else was bracing for a Fell attack to read Vendoin’s translation.
Sleeping heavily, Moon was only vaguely aware of it when the sunsailer’s motivator thrummed into life. Not long after that, Jade climbed onto the bench and curled up with him.
He woke knowing that it was well past dawn. He sat up carefully and disentangled himself from Jade. Merit and Bramble were gone, but Chime, Root, a
nd Briar occupied the other benches.
Moon managed not to wake anyone as he slipped out of the cabin, though he was still off-balance and bleary. He went down the passage toward the bow, found his way through a crew area filled with sleeping bodies, and then out the door onto the deck. Stone was out there, leaning on the railing, but it was the view that caught Moon’s attention first.
The water was a deep dark blue, and the sky above it a limitless horizon. The boat crested gentle swells and was moving southeast, its motivator fighting the current to keep them from being pushed farther out into the ocean. He moved to the railing and leaned beside Stone. The wind had changed and it was absolutely devoid of anything but water and salt. It made Moon realize just how much the scattered islands had added an undercurrent of sand and greenery and other scents to the sea winds. They had never been far from land or a reef or one of the shallow zones. Here, there was nothing.
Then motion caught Moon’s eye several hundred paces off the starboard stern. Water fountained briefly, then a great shape rose up. Sunlight glanced off bright silver scales and a delicate multi-colored array of feelers concealing the top of the creature’s head. There were three of the crab-like waterlings from the city clamped in its long jaw. It sank back below the surface before the ripples from its appearance reached the boat to gently rock it. Moon wanted to make a noise but his throat had temporarily closed up.
Stone said, “Some of the waterlings followed us from the city, but that keeps happening.” He added, “Rorra says we’re still on the fringe.”
Moon reminded himself they had traveled over water this deep before, water also filled with menace, in the freshwater sea, but somehow it wasn’t the same. Even if it was vast, the freshwater sea was surrounded by land, and fed by rivers, and somehow that made a difference. He fought his flight instinct down and managed to say, “Did you sleep?”
Stone rolled his shoulders and stood up straight, still propping himself up on the railing. “Out here. The Fell missed us completely. Getting out of there unnoticed was what that underwater tunnel was meant for.”
