The Cloud Roads

by Martha Wells

  The

  CLOUD ROADS

  MARTHA WELLS

  Night Shade Books

  San Francisco

  Other books by Martha Wells:

  The Element of Fire

  The Death of the Necromancer

  City of Bones

  Wheel of the Infinite

  The Wizard Hunters

  The Ships of Air

  The Gate of Gods

  Stargate: Atlantis

  SGA: Reliquary

  SGA: Entanglement

  Forthcoming in 2012

  The Serpent Sea

  The Cloud Roads

  © 2011 by Martha Wells

  This edition of

  The Cloud Roads

  © 2011 by Night Shade Books

  Edited by Janna Silverstein

  Cover art by Matthew Stewart

  Cover design by Rebecca Silvers

  Interior layout and design by Michael Lee

  All rights reserved

  First Printing

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-216-1

  Printed In Canada

  Night Shade Books

  Please visit us on the web at

  http://www.nightshadebooks.com

  To Jennifer Jackson

  for believing in this book

  Chapter One

  Moon had been thrown out of a lot of groundling settlements and camps, but he hadn’t expected it from the Cordans.

  The day started out normal enough. Moon had been hunting alone as usual, following the vargit, the big flightless birds common to this river valley. He had killed one for himself, then taken a nap on a sun-warmed rock and slept a little too long. By the time he found a second vargit for the camp, killed it, dressed it, and hauled it back, the sky was darkening. The gate in the rickety fence of woven sticks was closed, and he shook it, shifting the heavy dead bird on his shoulder. “Open up, it’s me.”

  The gate and the entire fence were mostly a formality. The camp was built on a field leading down to the wide bed of the river, and the fence didn’t even go all the way around. The jungle lay just outside it, climbing up the hills toward the steep cliffs and gorges to the east. The dense leaves of the tall trees, wreathed with vines and hung with heavy moss, formed a spreading canopy that kept the ground beneath in perpetual twilight. Anything could come out of there at the camp, and the weak fence wouldn’t stop it. The Cordans knew that, but Moon still felt it gave a false sense of security that made everyone careless, especially the children. But the fence had sentimental value, reminding the Cordans of the walled towns in their old land in Kiaspur, before it had been taken by the Fell. Plans to take it down and use it for firewood always came to nothing.

  After more shaking, something moved just inside the gate, and Hac’s dull voice said, “Me who?” Then Hac laughed, a low noise that ended in a gurgling cough.

  Moon looked away, letting out an exasperated breath. The fence wasn’t made any more effective by letting the most mentally deficient member of the group guard it, but there weren’t a lot of jobs Hac could do.

  Sunset beyond the distant mountains cast the lush, forested hills with orange and yellow light. It also framed a sky-island, floating sedately high in the air over the far end of the valley. It had been drifting into the area for some days, traveling with the vagaries of the wind. Heavy vegetation overflowed the island’s surface and hung down the sides. Moon could just make out the shapes of ruined towers and walls nearly covered by encroaching greenery. A flock of birds with long white bodies, each big enough to seize a grazing herdbeast in its talons, flew past it, and Moon felt a surge of pure envy. Tonight, he promised himself. It’s been long enough.

  But for now he had to get into the damn camp. He tried to make his voice flat and not betray his irritation. Showing Hac you were annoyed just made him worse. “The meat’s spoiling, Hac.”

  Hac laughed again, coughed again, and finally unlatched the gate.

  Moon hauled the bird inside. Hac crouched on the ground beside the fence, watching him with malicious glee. Hac looked like a typical Cordan: short and stocky, with pale gray-green skin and dull green hair. Most Cordans had patches of small glittering scales on their faces or arms, legacy of an alliance with a sea realm sometime in the history of their dead empire. On some of the others, especially the young, the effect was like glittering skin-jewelry. On Hac, it just looked slimy.

  Hac, who held a similar opinion of Moon, said, “Hello, ugly.”

  A few other outsiders lived with the Cordans, but Moon tended to stand out. A good head taller than most of them, he was lean and rawboned where they were heavyset. He had dark bronze skin that never burned no matter how bright the sun, dark hair. The only thing green about him was his eyes.

  “Keep up the good work, Hac,” Moon said, and resisted the urge to kick Hac in the head as he carried the carcass past.

  Tents were scattered across the compound, conical structures made of woven cable-rushes, dried and pressed and faintly sweet-smelling. They stretched down to the greenroot plantings at the edge of the broad river bed. At the moment, most of the inhabitants were gathered around the common area in the camp’s center, portioning out the meat the hunters had brought back. People down at the river washed and filled big clay water jars. A few women worked at the cooking fires outside the tents. As Moon walked up the packed dirt path toward the central area, an excited band of children greeted him, hurrying along beside him and staring curiously at the vargit. Their enthusiastic welcome went a long way to make up for Hac.

  The elders and other hunters all sat around on straw mats in front of the elders’ tent, and some of the women and older kids were busy cutting and wrapping the kills brought back earlier. Moon dropped the vargit carcass on the muddy straw mat with the others, and set aside the bow and quiver of arrows he hadn’t used. He had gotten very good at dressing his game in such a way that it was impossible to tell exactly how it had been killed. Dargan the headman leaned forward to look at it and nodded approval. “You had a good day after all, then. When you were late, we worried.”

  “I had to track them down the valley. It just took a little longer than I thought.” Moon sat on his heels at the edge of the mat, stifling a yawn. He was still full from his first kill, which had been a much bigger vargit. Most of his time had gone to finding a more medium-sized one that he could carry back without help. But the novelty of coming home to people who worried that something might have happened to him had never paled.

  Ildras, the chief hunter, gave him a friendly nod. “We never saw you, and thought perhaps you’d gone toward the west.”

  Moon made a mental note to make certain he crossed paths with Ildras’ group tomorrow, and to make certain it happened more frequently from now on. He was comfortable here, and it was making him a little careless. He knew from long experience that elaborate lies were a bad idea, so he just said, “I didn’t see anybody either.”

  Dargan waved for one of the boys to come over to cut up Moon’s kill. Dargan and the other male elders kept track of all the provisions, portioning them out to the rest of the camp. It made sense, but the way they did it had always bothered Moon. He thought the others might resent it sometimes, but it was hard to tell since nobody talked about it.

  Then Ildras nudged Dargan and said, “Tell him the news.”

  “Oh, the news.” Dargan’s expression turned briefly sardonic. He told Moon, “The Fell have come to the valley.”

  Moon stared. But Ildras’s expression was wry, and the others looked, variously, amused, bored, and annoyed. Two of the boys skinning a herdbeast carcass collapsed into muffled giggling and were shushed by one of the women. Moon decided this was one of those times when he just didn’t understand the Cordans’ sense of humor. He discarded the first few r
esponses that occurred to him and went with, “Why do you say that?”

  Dargan nodded toward another elder. “Tacras saw it.”

  Tacras, whose eyes were too wide in a way that made him look a little crazy, nodded. “One of the harbingers, a big one.”

  Moon bit his lip to control his expression and tried to look thoughtful. Obviously the group had decided to humor Tacras. The creatures the Cordans knew as harbingers were actually called major kethel, the largest of all Fell. If one had been near the camp, Moon would have scented it. It would be in the air, in the river water. The things gave off an unbelievable stench. But he couldn’t exactly tell the Cordans that. Also, if Tacras had been close enough to see a major kethel, it would have eaten him. “Where?”

  Tacras pointed off to the west.“From the cliff on the edge of the forest, where it looks down into the gorge.”

  “Did it speak to you?” Vardin asked in wide-eyed mockery.

  “Vardin,” Dargan said in reproof, but it was a little too late.

  Tacras glared. “You disrespect your elder!” He shoved to his feet. “Be fools then. I know what I saw.”

  He stamped away, off between the tents, and everybody sighed. Ildras reached over and gave Vardin a shove on the shoulder, apparently as punishment. Moon kept his mouth shut and did not wince in annoyance. They had all been making fun of the old man anyway. Vardin had just brought it out in the open. If Dargan hadn’t wanted that to happen, he shouldn’t have made his own derision so clear.

  “He’s crazy,” Kavath said, sounding sour and worried as he watched Tacras walk away. He was another outsider, though he had been here much longer than Moon. He had shiny pale blue skin, a long narrow face, and a crest of gray feathers down the middle of his skull. “He’s going to cause a panic.”

  The Cordans all just shrugged, looking unlikely to panic. Dargan added, “Everyone knows he’s a little touched. They won’t listen. But do not contradict him. It’s disrespectful to his age.” With the air of being done with the whole subject, he turned to Moon and said, “Now tell us if you saw any bando-hoppers down in that end of the valley. I think it must be the season for them soon.”

  When Moon had first found the Cordans and been accepted into their group, Dargan had presented him with a tent, and with Selis and Ilane. Moon had been very much looking forward to the tent; in fact, it was the whole reason he had wanted to join the Cordans in the first place. He had been traveling alone a long time at that point, and the idea of sleeping warm and dry, without having to worry about something coming along and eating him, had been too attractive to pass up. The reality was every bit as good as he had hoped. Selis and Ilane, however, had taken some getting used to.

  It was twilight by the time he reached his tent, shadows gathering. He met Selis coming out with the waterskin.

  “You took long enough,” she snapped, and snatched the packet of meat away.

  “Tell that to Dargan,” Moon snapped back. She knew damn well that he had to wait for the elders to divide up the kill, but he had given up trying to reason with her about three days after being accepted into the Cordan camp. He took the waterskin away from her and went to fill it at the troughs.

  When the Cordans had fled their last town, many of their young men had been killed covering their escape. It had left them with a surplus of young women. The Cordans believed the women needed men to provide for them; Moon had no idea why. He knew that Selis in particular was perfectly capable of chasing down any number of grasseaters and beating them to death with a club, so he didn’t see why she couldn’t hunt for herself. But it was the way the Cordans lived, and he wasn’t going to argue. And he liked Ilane.

  By the time he got back, Selis had the meat laid out on a flat stone and was cutting it up into portions. Ilane sat on a mat beside the fire.

  Ilane was beautiful, though the other Cordans didn’t think so, and their lack of regard had made her quiet and timid. She was too tall, too slender, with a pearlescent quality to her pale green skin. Moon had tried to tell her that in most of the places he had lived, she would be considered lovely, that it was just a matter of perception. But he wasn’t certain he had ever been able to make her understand. Selis looked more typically Cordan, stocky and strong, with iridescent patches on her cheeks and forehead. He wasn’t sure why she had been stuck with him, but suspected her personality had a lot to do with it.

  Moon stowed his weapons in the tent and dropped down onto the mat next to Ilane. She was peeling a greenroot, the big, melon-like staple that the Cordans ate with everything, fried, mashed, or raw. After the kill earlier in the day, Moon wasn’t hungry and wouldn’t be for the next day or so. But not eating in front of other people was one of the first mistakes he had ever made, and he didn’t intend to make it again. It had gotten him chased out of the nice silk-weaving town of Var-tilth, and the memory still stung.

  “Moon.” Ilane’s voice was always quiet, but this time it held a note of painful hesitancy. “Do you think the Fell are here?”

  Tacras’ story had, of course, spread all over camp. Moon knew he should say what Dargan had said, but looking at Ilane, her pale green skin ashy-gray with fear, he just couldn’t. “No. I’ve been hunting in the open all up and down the valley and I haven’t seen anything. Neither have the others.”

  As she wrapped the meat up in bandan leaves to put into the coals, Selis said, “So Tacras lies because he wants to frighten us to death for his amusement.”

  Moon pretended to consider it. “Probably not. Not everybody’s like you.”

  She gave him a sour grimace. Forced into actually asking a question, she said, “Then what?”

  Ilane was having trouble getting the knife through the tough greenroot skin. Moon took it and sawed the hard ends off. He squinted at Selis. “Do you know how many things there are that fly besides Fell?”

  Selis’ jaw set. She did know, but she didn’t want to admit it. All the Cordans knew that further up in the hills, there were birds, flighted and not, that were nearly as large as the small Fell, and nearly as dangerous.

  “So Tacras was wrong?” Ilane said, her perfect brow creased in a frown.

  Moon finished stripping the greenroot’s outer husk and started to slice it.“He saw it with the sun in his eyes, and made a mistake.”

  “We should all be so lucky,” Selis said, but Moon knew enough Selis-speak to hear it as a grudging admission that he was probably right.

  He hoped he was right. Investigating it gave him yet another reason to go out tonight.

  “You’re cutting the greenroot wrong,” Selis snapped.

  Moon waited until late into the night, lying on his back and staring at the shadows on the tent’s curved supports, listening to the camp go gradually quiet around him. The air was close and damp, and it seemed to take a long time for everyone to settle down. It would never go silent; there were too many people. But it had been a while since he had heard a voice nearby, or the low wail of a fretful baby.

  Moon slid away from Ilane. She stirred, making a sleepy sound of inquiry. He whispered, “It’s too warm. I’m going to take a walk, maybe sleep outside.”

  She hummed under her breath and rolled over. Moon eased to his feet, found his shirt, and made a wide circle around Selis’ pallet as he slipped outside.

  He and Ilane had been sleeping together since the second month Moon had been here. She had made the first overtures to him before that, apparently, but Moon hadn’t understood what she wanted. Ilane hadn’t understood what she had interpreted as his refusal, either, and had been very unhappy. Moon had had no idea what was going on and had seriously considered a strategic retreat—right out of the camp—until one night Selis had thrown her hands in the air in frustration and explained to him what Ilane wanted.

  Ilane was sweet-tempered, but her lack of understanding was sometimes frustrating. Several days ago, she had said she wanted to have a baby, and Moon had had to tell her he didn’t think it was possible. That had been a hard conversation.

>   She had just stared tragically at him, her eyes huge, as if this was something he was deliberately withholding. “We’re too different,”he told her,feeling helpless. “I’m not a Cordan.” He thought that if there had been any chance of it, it would have happened already.

  Ilane blinked and her silver brows drew together. “You want Selis instead.”

  Selis, sitting across the fire and mending the ripped sleeve of a shirt, shook her head in weary resignation. “Just give up,” she told Moon.

  Moon threw her a grim look and persisted, telling Ilane, “No, no, I don’t think...I can’t give you a baby. It just won’t happen.” He added hopefully, “You could have babies with somebody else and bring them to live with us.” Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t a bad idea. He knew he could bring in enough food for a larger group, even with the elders taking their share.

  Ilane had just continued to stare. Selis had muttered to Moon, “You are so stupid.”

  He stepped outside. The air was cool compared to the close interior of the tent, with just enough movement to lift the damp a little. The full moon was bright, almost bright enough to see the groundling woman that supposedly lived in it. The sky was crowded with stars; it was hard not to just leap into the air.

  Moon stood beside the tent for a moment, pretending to stretch. Across the width of the camp, two sentries stood at the gate with torches, but the cooking fires were out or banked. He carried Ilane’s scent on his skin, and the whole camp smelled of Cordan, so it was tricky to sense anyone nearby. But he wasn’t going to get a better chance.

  His bare feet were silent on the packed ground between the tents. He didn’t see anyone else, but he could hear deep breathing, the occasional sleepy mutter as he passed. He stopped at the latrine ditches, pissed into one, then wandered off, tying the drawstring on his pants again.