The Cloud Roads

by Martha Wells

  Stone sat on his heels to rummage through his pack. “We’re not staying that long. I want to get moving again soon.”

  Moon growled under his breath but didn’t argue; if Stone wanted to test him, fine. And he didn’t want to stay in these mountains any longer than they had to, either. He curled up into a huddle, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. To distract himself, and to try to get some understanding of Stone’s route, he asked, “Why didn’t you stop at the other colony on the way east?”

  “Sky Copper has always been small. I knew they weren’t likely to have any spare warriors. I need to talk to them about something else.” Stone found a ratty, dark colored bundle in his pack that Moon had assumed was just cushioning for the kettle. Apparently it was a blanket. “And the mentors said the best chance was to go to Star Aster.” His expression turned preoccupied. “Or toward Star Aster. Maybe they said ‘toward.’”

  Moon put that together with Stone’s earlier comment, that it took special talent to be a mentor. “The mentors are shamen?” He had often had bad luck with shamen. They were either worthless or immediately suspicious of him.

  “Augurs, mostly, and healers,” Stone corrected, still preoccupied as he spread out the blanket. He lay down and shoved his pack into place as a pillow. “Come on, get some rest.” He patted the other half of the blanket, offering it to Moon.

  Moon didn’t move. He still found Stone nearly impossible to read. Not that he had been able to read Ilane, either. “I’m not sleeping with you.” If this was going to be a problem, he wanted to find out now, before he spent any more long, miserable days fighting headwinds.

  Stone lifted a brow, deeply amused. “I have great-grandchildren older than you.” He pointed to a white seam on his elbow. “You see this scar? That’s older than you.”

  Moon’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, but he wondered if that was true. He hadn’t been keeping close track, but he knew roughly that it had been around thirty-five turns of the seasonal cycle since his family had been killed. That made him old for some groundling races and young for others. If Stone was really that old, and Moon was really the same species...If this doesn’t work out, you’re going to be spending a lot of time alone.

  He edged over and eased down next to Stone. The blanket looked shabby but it was thick and well made; it didn’t soften the rock but it kept the cold at bay. Rolling on his side, facing away from Moon, Stone said, “I’ll try not to molest you in my sleep.”

  “Bastard,” Moon muttered. He would have retreated to the other end of the cleft in a huff, but Stone seemed to put out almost as much body heat as a groundling as he did in his other form. Still annoyed, Moon fell asleep.

  It was deep into the night and Moon was curled against Stone’s back, when Stone thumped him with an elbow and said it was time to go.

  The mountains stretched on and on, but even when the clouds gathered and they flew through cold mist that was like breathing wet wool, there was no question of getting lost. Moon had always known which way due south was, could feel it as if it pulled at his bones. From the way Stone confidently soared through the thick clouds, never veering from their course, Moon thought he must have a similar ability.

  For the next few days, they flew by day and by night, stopping only briefly to sleep and hunt the sparse game. Moon had seen several different breeds of mountain grasseaters but they were all boney and lean, and didn’t make for satisfying meals. Though the long flights were exhausting, Moon quickly gained stamina. But the part of the day he looked forward to the most was before they slept, when Stone asked him questions about where he had lived, how far he had traveled, what he had seen. With more tact than Moon would have given him credit for, he didn’t mention the Cordans.

  It was strange to talk about the places Moon had been without having to carefully avoid anything that had to do with flying or shifting. In return, Stone talked about flying over the sea realms, seeing the shapes of white coral towers just below the waves, the flickering tails of merrow-people and waterlings as they fled his shadow. It was dangerous to go out over the seas, with nowhere to land if you ran into a storm or grew too tired to go on; it was even more risky to swim in the deeps, where creatures far larger than the biggest land predators lived. Moon had never ventured much past the coastal islands to the south, and found it fascinating to hear what lay further out.

  By twilight on the fifth day, they came to the fringes of the mountains, where the sharp peaks tumbled gradually down into green hills and rocky outcrops were cut through with narrow, rushing streams. This time Stone picked out a grassy ledge wide enough for a fire, though it was warmer down here than on the upper slopes. Moon suspected he just wanted to make tea. When Moon brought back a bundle of deadfall collected from the brush in the ravines, he found Stone shifted to groundling, with a big, woolly grasseater carcass steaming in the cool air and a rock hearth already built.

  After they ate, Moon stretched out on his stomach, basking in the warm firelight, the cool turf soft against his groundling skin, comfortably full of grasseater and tea. From somewhere distant, he heard a roar, edged like a bell and so far away it almost blended with the wind. He slanted a look at Stone to see if they had to worry.

  “Skylings, mountain wind-walkers.” Stone sat by the fire, breaking sticks up into small pieces and absently tossing them into the flames. “They live too far up in the air to notice us.”

  Moon rolled onto his side to squint suspiciously up at the sky. The stars were bright, streaked with clouds. “Then what do they eat?”

  “Other skylings, tiny ones, no bigger than gnats. They make swarms big enough to mistake for clouds.” As Moon tried to picture that, Stone asked, “Did you ever look for other shifters?”

  Stone hadn’t asked about this before, and Moon wanted to avoid the subject. Looking for his own people had led him into more trouble than anything else. “For awhile. Then I stopped.” He shrugged, as if it was nothing. “I couldn’t search the whole Three Worlds.”

  “And the warrior you were with didn’t tell you which court, or the name of the queen, or anyone in your line?” Stone sounded distinctly irritated. “She didn’t even give you a hint?”

  Moon corrected him pointedly, “No, my mother didn’t tell me anything.”

  Stone sighed, poking at the fire. Moon got ready for an argument, but instead Stone asked, “How did she and the Arbora die?”

  That wasn’t a welcome subject either. It was like an old wound that had never quite stopped bleeding. Moon didn’t want to talk about the details, but he owed Stone some kind of an answer. He propped his chin on his arms and looked out into the dark. “Tath killed them.”

  Tath were reptilian groundlings, predators, and they had surrounded the tree Moon’s family had been sleeping in. He remembered waking, confused and terrified, as his mother tossed him out of the nest. He had realized later that she had picked him because he was the only other one who could fly, the only one who had a chance to escape while she stayed to defend the others.

  He had been too young to fly well, and had crashed down through the branches, tumbling nearly to the ground, within reach of the Tath waiting below. One had snatched at him and Moon had clawed its eyes, struggling away. He had half-flown, half-climbed through the trees back up to the nest. But his mother and the others were all dead, torn to pieces.

  If he had realized how hard living without them would be, he would have let the Tath catch him. He just said, “It happened... fast.”

  They were both silent for a time, listening to the fire crackle. Moon had the feeling that Stone was as uncomfortable offering sympathy as Moon was reluctant to accept it. He wasn’t surprised when Stone tossed a last stick into the fire, dusted his hands, and veered off the subject completely. “Do you know why it’s called the Three Worlds?”

  Moon relaxed again, settling down into the turf, relieved to be on safer ground. “Three continents.” It was a wild guess. Moon had never seen a map big enough to show more than the immediate area
.

  “Three realms: sea, earth, and sky. Everyone remembers the sea realms, but they’ve forgotten the sky realms. It’s been so many generations since the island peoples fought among themselves. They’re mostly gone now, with no one left to tell the stories.”

  Moon wondered if he had been right about the sky-islands all along. “Is that where we’re from?”

  His gaze distant, Stone said, “No. We’ve always come from the earth.”

  At dawn they flew out across the grassland, where old pillars stuck up out of the ground, part of an ancient scattered roadway or aqueduct. So many peoples had come and gone from the Three Worlds that it was littered with their remnants.

  By afternoon they found an intact road, cutting through the ocean of tall green grass, more than a hundred paces wide and built of the same white stone as the broken pillars. As the day darkened toward evening, they spotted a groundling caravan traveling upon it.

  The caravan included box wagons, heavily carved of dark wood, pulled by large, shaggy draughtbeasts with substantial horns. It had stopped and was preparing to camp for the night, with the groundlings unharnessing the beasts, putting up tents, building cook fires.

  Moon and Stone flew high enough that the groundlings hadn’t noticed them. They both blended in with the twilight sky, but Moon banked to give the camp wide berth anyway. He doubted the caravan had weapons that could do any damage at this distance, but there was no point in frightening them. Then he saw Stone circling down, heading for a landing in the tall grass some distance from the edge of the road. Is he out of his mind? he thought, startled.

  Stone dropped into a low spot at an angle to the road, so swift and silent the groundlings probably hadn’t seen him.

  Moon went down as fast as he could, alighting in the flattened grass that marked Stone’s landing site. Stone had already shifted to groundling and stretched extravagantly, rolling his shoulders. The grass around them was as tall as a small tree, standing well above their heads. Moon shifted, demanding, “What are you doing?”

  Stone gave him a pointed look, as if the answer was obvious. “I want the news. They’re Sericans, probably coming from Kish.”

  “What, you’re just going to walk up to them?” Moon had trouble believing he was serious.

  Stone lifted a brow. “I could stand on the roadside and try to signal, but—”

  Moon shook his head incredulously. “They’re going to know what we are. How many groundlings do you see wandering around out here?”

  “Maybe fifty or sixty, judging by the wagons.” Stone shouldered his pack and explained patiently, “These people travel long distances, and they see a lot of strange things. Some of them will suspect we’re different. As long as they don’t feel threatened, they won’t act on it.”

  It still sounded crazy. Moon had approached groundlings like this before, but only after making certain he didn’t look like anything but another traveler, even if it meant landing a day’s walk or more away. “What if you’re wrong?”

  Stone started away through the grass. “I’ve been wrong before,” he admitted, not helpfully.

  Moon reluctantly trailed him to the edge of the road. It was built up more than ten paces high, more of a causeway through the grassland, something that hadn’t been apparent from the air. Crumbling sets of steps had been built at intervals, half-buried in the grass; whatever they led to was long vanished. Stone climbed the nearest and started across toward the camp. Still expecting disaster, Moon crouched uneasily at the edge of the road.

  The wagons were arranged in a half-circle, and the camp smelled of wood smoke, incense, and onion roots frying in nut oil. The groundlings had blue skin, a much darker blue than Kavath’s, and their hair was black. They wore bright colors, long coats and pantaloons of red or blue or dark green, embroidered and trimmed with gold or black braid. They had spears, and short bows that looked as if they were made of horn. The furry draughtbeasts shook their hides and lowed as Stone approached.

  Several men came out to greet him, warily at first, but they seemed to grow easier as he spoke to them. The wind carried their voices away but Moon could hear fragments. The head drover, speaking Altanic, asked if they were from Kaupi or Loros, and Stone replied only that they were travelers, heading west. Finally they took Stone into the camp to sit by the fire with an older man who was probably their leader. Moon saw the man’s sharp eyes glance his way, and heard him say, “The young one is skittish?”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Stone answered.

  Moon noticed he didn’t accept the caravaners’ offers of food and drink. In turn, the caravaners refused Stone’s offer of a pressed tea cake from his pack. Moon watched the old man watch Stone. He knows, and the thought made Moon’s nerves itch. Only two of them out here, Moon without even a bag to carry food, fighting their way through the grass rather than walking on the road. The groundling knew he was sitting there at his fire with something strange, not just a man from a different race. But he seemed to be intrigued rather than frightened. How Stone could do this, Moon didn’t understand.

  He hasn’t been alone forever, hasn’t been hunted, Moon thought. Maybe the caravaners felt it, and it made them unafraid. Of course, Stone could shift in an eye blink, and those arrows would do little damage to his hide.

  Maybe Moon had just been doing it wrong all this time. Living in the wrong part of the Three Worlds, approaching groundlings in the wrong way, living a deception he couldn’t maintain. After a time, people sensed he was lying, and assumed he meant them harm. I don’t know. He sighed and rubbed his gritty eyes and wished Stone would hurry.

  The women came over to sit by the fire and join the conversation. They wore the same clothes as the men, their breasts bare under the open coats, their hair worn straight and unbound to the waist. After a time, some of the younger girls even ventured to the edge of the camp, trying to coax Moon over. He sidled away along the wall when they came closer than twenty paces. Someone called them back and they retreated, giggling, the bells sewn into their clothes chiming as they ran.

  Stone left them not long after night fell, coming back to the wall where Moon waited. “Was there news?” Moon asked, sounding deliberately skeptical. He unfolded his legs and jumped down off the road.

  Stone took the steps. “There are rumors of Fell along the inland sea. They haven’t seen any, but they know caravaners and shipmasters who won’t go any further east than Demi now.” He sounded thoughtful. “For a couple of generations it seemed like they were dying out up this way. But now they’re moving around again, more active than they’ve been for twenty turns.”

  Moon had never heard of Demi, which just told him how well and truly lost he was. He shrugged uncomfortably. “There’s Fell everywhere,” he said, as they walked away into the grass.

  A few days later, Moon broke down and asked why Stone thought his mother had stolen him.

  They sat on top of a broken pillar at least a hundred paces high and wider than one of the Sericans’ big wagons, listening to the wind rustle the tall grass. It was a comfortable perch for the night; dirt and grass had collected on the rough surface, making a soft carpet to sleep on. Moon could see hills in the distance, dark outlines against the star-filled sky; Stone had said Sky Copper lay among them and that they would reach it in another day or so.

  Stone said slowly, “There’s what’s called a royal clutch. Five female Aeriat, born at the same time. As they grow into fledglings, one or two or three turn into queens and the rest become warriors. Sometimes the ones that turn out to be warriors... don’t get over the disappointment. It makes them do crazy things, sometimes. Like leave their court, steal clutches, or... other things.” He stirred a little uncomfortably, admitting, “It might have been something else. Sometimes colonies fail, and there were never many Raksura that far east where you were living. She could have been a survivor, trying to find somewhere to go.”

  Moon thought it over, looking off across the plain. Insects sang in the dark, and the day’s
heat still hung in the air. Further away, he could hear movement in the grass, low growls, carrion hunters coming for the carcass of the big furry grasseater they had eaten earlier. He had noticed that the big predators kept their distance; he thought there was something about Stone, even in groundling form, that warned them off.

  Moon tried to remember if there had been any hint that his mother was running from something, or to something. It was long ago, and as a boy he hadn’t paid much attention to anything but playing and learning to fly and hunt. But he knew she hadn’t been crazy. And talking about it any more was pointless. “What makes queens so different?”

  Stone stretched out on the grass and folded his hands on his chest, seeming content with the change of subject. “They have a color pattern to their scales, and their spines are longer. When they shift, they lose their wings, but they look more like Arbora than groundlings. They keep their claws, tails, some of their spines.”

  That was a strange thought, not being able to shift all the way to groundling. But it didn’t sound like queens could do much more than female warriors, except make more queens. “So what makes them special?” he asked, just to provoke Stone.

  “Queens hold the court together. And they have a power that mentors don’t,” Stone explained patiently. “If you’re close enough to her, a queen can keep you from shifting.”

  Is he serious? Moon thought, appalled. He stirred uneasily, scratching at the gnat bites on his thigh, trying to conceal his reaction. “Even you?”

  Stone lifted his brows. “Even me.”

  He was serious. “Are there a lot of them?”

  Stone frowned, as if this question was somehow loaded with meaning. “In Indigo Cloud, just the two. The reigning queen and the young one. There should be more, at least a clutch of sister queens to support the reigning queen. But we’ve had bad luck.”