The Serpent Sea

by Martha Wells

  “Come on,” Moon snapped at Esom and Karsis, knowing if he left them behind, they would point the way for the guards.

  Fortunately they didn’t argue. Esom pulled Karsis up and they both ran after Moon.

  The passage wound under the bulk of the stairwell, apparently a back way to the service areas behind the hall. Rift stopped at a spot where there wasn’t a door, just a carved panel that looked like part of the wall decoration. But there was a faint line of mold along one edge, showing that there must be something behind it. Rift grabbed the edge, worked his claws under it, and popped it open.

  It led into a dark space lit by greenish light that released a breath of dank air carrying a truly foul odor. Rift stepped inside, Moon pushed Karsis and Esom in after him, then stepped through himself.

  Moon helped Rift maneuver the panel back into place. There was no lock. He looked hurriedly around the small space. The dim greenish light came from odd little pockets in the stone walls; it was hard to tell if it had been intentionally placed there or was just a lichen or moss that grew naturally. There was nothing to wedge against the panel, nothing to keep the guards from prying it open once they realized it was an escape route.

  “We can’t seal it,” Rift told him, low-voiced. “We need to move away, or the wardens will hear us.”

  “Can Ardan send those things after us?” Moon asked in Raksuran. They started down the passage, which sloped downward in a long spiral. Karsis slipped a little on the slimy paving but caught Esom’s shoulder to steady herself. Both of them watched Rift warily.

  Rift replied in the same language, “He can send them, but he has to figure out where we went, first. They can’t appear out of nowhere. He has to put the guard-spells for them in place. I don’t think he knows about these passages.”

  “You don’t think.” That wasn’t reassuring, but then nothing about Rift was. “How did you find the way down here without killing the guardthings in the main hall?” That would have had to alert Ardan that Rift had been poking around down here.

  “I found it during the day,” Rift said. He jerked his head toward Esom and Karsis. “What are we going to do with them?”

  That “we” was awfully confident. Switching back to Kedaic, Moon asked Esom, “If you’re a shaman, why didn’t you escape before?”

  Stiffly, Esom said, “I’ve tried, but I knew the wardens would stop us. As you saw, the sight-spell doesn’t work very well on them.”

  “We weren’t very organized,” Karsis admitted. “We tried to get Negal and Orlis, but the guards had already locked them in. And we aren’t even certain where Ardan is keeping our other crew members.” “How were you planning to get through the barrier?”

  Esom started to speak, then hesitated, and Moon saw Karsis dart a look at him. Esom said, “With all the confusion, I thought we might be able to conceal ourselves down here until morning, when the barrier goes down and the outside doors are opened.”

  They were terrible liars. “Hide from that creature till morning? I don’t think so. I think you knew you could get through the barrier.”

  The two groundlings exchanged a grim look, and Esom said, “All right, yes. I think I can get through the barrier, but I’m not certain. I’ve never had a chance to escape from the upper level and test it.”

  Rift told Moon, “I knew he was a wizard all along, but he can’t do much. He’s not nearly as powerful as Ardan.”

  Esom stopped abruptly and stared at Rift. He said, “You knew?”

  Karsis demanded, more to the point, “Why didn’t you tell Ardan?”

  Rift bared a fang in an ironic smile. “I’m not Ardan’s servant.”

  Esom sneered back. “So you’re his pet?”

  Growling, Rift reached toward him and Esom jerked back. Moon hissed and flicked his spines. Rift glared resentfully, but eased away from Esom.

  Esom looked from Rift to Moon, then wet his lips and said, “If you don’t help us escape, we’ll tell Ardan’s men which way you went.”

  Karsis cleared her throat, a little embarrassed. Apparently she had seen the flaw in her brother’s plan. Moon said, “Or we could just kill you.”

  Esom blinked, then grimaced. Karsis elbowed him and he glared at her. “All right, fine.” He took a deep breath. “I think I know where the seed is, the one you’ve been asking about, that Ardan took from the giant tree. I’m not certain, but I have a good idea.”

  That was different. Moon took a step nearer, looming over him. “Where?”

  Esom lifted his chin and squared his shoulders, the groundling equivalent of lifting his spines. “I want your promise to help us escape, and to help us get our friends away from Ardan.”

  Moon thought it over fast, flicking his spines. “I can take you out of here with us now, but I can’t go back for your friends. Ardan will search the city for us and there’s no way we can get back inside this tower.” That might or might not be true, but he wasn’t going to make promises he couldn’t keep.

  Esom looked at Karsis, who gave him a helpless shrug and said, “At least we’d be free to try to help the others.”

  Esom, jaw set and ready to argue, visibly deflated. “All right, I’ll—”

  A thump somewhere above interrupted him. Rift twitched in alarm. “They’re coming.”

  “Come on, move.” Moon gave Rift a push and started away down the passage. Motioning Karsis and Esom to follow, he whispered, “You keep talking.”

  Keeping his voice low, Esom said rapidly, “When we first arrived in the city, Ardan let us explore at will. Towards the front of the creature, near a flooded valley where its left front leg dips down, there’s a domed building that looked as if it had some important purpose. Negal and I went there. Part of it is apparently used as some sort of mortuary temple, but the public area was covered with carvings showing what seemed to be early magisters taking control of the leviathan by placing an object in contact with its body. These carvings led toward a doorway, with a stairwell down. Guards prevented us from going any further, but…” He hesitated, and Karsis nudged him impatiently. “Part of my ability… I can see and feel emanations from magical artifacts. That’s how I found the metora stone to power our vessel, the Klodifore. And I’m sure there’s something down there, some source of magic,” Esom finished.

  Moon managed not to hiss impatiently. He was glad he hadn’t made them any extravagant promises in a moment of weakness. “Ardan didn’t have the seed then. Why do you think it’s there now?”

  Esom said, “On the journey through the forest, he kept talking about how urgent this was, that the survival of the city depended on it, that they were in danger of losing control of the leviathan.”

  Karsis added, “When we reached the tree, we only spent one day there. Once he found the seed, he wanted to leave immediately.”

  Esom continued, “We haven’t seen the seed since we got back to the city. It stands to reason, if he wanted it to help him and the other magisters with the leviathan, it must be in that building, in the place where they control the creature.”

  If it was a lie, it was an odd one. Esom could have said the seed was still in the tower, to trick Moon into going back for his friends.

  Then Rift said, “He’s right. Ardan took it there the day we got back from the Reaches.”

  Moon stared at him. He said through gritted teeth, “You said you didn’t know where it was.”

  Rift turned back to give Moon a look of impatient innocence. “I knew it wasn’t in the tower. I didn’t want to waste time trying to convince you to leave.”

  Moon switched to Raksuran to say, pointedly, “If you knew this, why did you let me make a bargain with him?” He would have taken Esom and Karsis out with them anyway, as long as they were here, but he wanted to know what Rift was playing at.

  Rift paused at an intersection in the passage, where another ramp spiraled more steeply down. The flow of damp, foul-smelling air hadn’t increased, but Moon could hear the growing sound of rushing wind, rising and falling in
oddly regular gusts. In the same language, Rift said, as if it was obvious, “We don’t need them. You don’t have to keep the bargain.”

  This was an interesting insight into Rift’s thought processes. Moon said, “If you expect me to trust you, you might want to stop lying and betraying people in front of me.”

  Rift twitched, watched him uncertainly, then turned to lead the way down the ramp.

  Moon couldn’t trust what Rift told him and he couldn’t trust Esom and Karsis, but with all three together, he might be able to get something close to the truth out of them. Though if Esom had really concealed his power from Ardan all this time, he was a better liar than Moon would have thought.

  Running footsteps from somewhere far up the passage suggested that Ardan’s men had found the panel and opened it. They didn’t have much time.

  Two more spirals down, and the ramp ended in a low-ceilinged chamber, sparsely lit with the green mold, with a large round hole in the center of the floor. Moon stepped to the edge. The shaft plunged more than a hundred paces down, the bottom lost in the dim greenish light. The wind sound came from somewhere below, and the smell was horrific.

  “Down there,” Rift said. He glanced worriedly back up the ramp. “We need to hurry.”

  Esom and Karsis exchanged an appalled look. Wonderful, Moon thought, privately agreeing with them. To Rift he said, “You take her, I’ll take—”

  “No,” Esom interrupted. He told Moon, “You take Karsis.”

  It was an interesting point, that Esom felt his sister was safer with Moon, another Raksura and a stranger, than Rift. In Raksuran, Moon said to Rift, “I want them both alive. Drop him, and I’ll gut you.”

  Rift hissed in exasperation. “I won’t. I told you, I want to help you.”

  Moon caught Karsis around the waist and jumped down into the shaft to catch the edge one-handed. She made a noise like a short shriek and grabbed his shoulders. His claws hooked on a gap in the mortar, Moon said, “Put your arms around my neck and hold on. Watch the spines, they’re sharp.”

  “Yes, I see.” Karsis wound her arms around his neck, holding on tightly. Moon planted his feet on the wall and pushed off, falling to catch hold of another gap further down. Karsis’ shriek was closer to a strangled yelp that time. “Sorry,” she gasped.

  Moon glanced up, saw that Rift had Esom and hung from the upper ledge. Moon cautiously let go of Karsis, made certain she had a firm hold on him, and began to climb down the wall.

  Keeping his voice low, Moon said, “Tell me about Rift.”

  She whispered, “We didn’t know what he was, at first. He came on the voyage to the forest coast with Ardan and his other men. Ardan said Rift would be our guide. He didn’t reveal himself until Ardan needed his help to force us to keep going inland.” She hesitated, then added, “We thought he was one of a kind, a…”

  “Monster,” Moon finished for her.

  “Yes, until we reached the tree and saw the artwork. It looked as if it had been abandoned for ages. We didn’t— And even Ardan and Rift didn’t think anyone lived there anymore.”

  “It wasn’t abandoned, just… waiting.” The last thing he wanted at the moment was an apology. “Where is Rift from?”

  “He’s never said.” She gasped as he had to drop for the next handhold, but recovered quickly. “Is it important?”

  Moon couldn’t answer that right now either. He wanted Rift to be from a rival court, a place hostile to Indigo Cloud. He wanted him to be in the power of the Fell. “Why didn’t you mention that Ardan had a pet Raksura?”

  “Ardan has six members of our crew locked up somewhere in the tower. He said if we spoke about Rift to anyone he’d order them killed. We know he’s serious. Five of our crew tried to escape in the forest, and he had them executed. He let Rift kill three of his own men when we were at the tree.”

  That explained the bones left behind in the root passage. “What for?”

  “Rift caught the men destroying some of the wall carvings, trying to take the inset gems.”

  Moon snarled under his breath, incredulous. “What?” Karsis asked nervously.

  “He showed Ardan how to take the seed; that’s killing the tree. Those carvings were all going to rot away with the rest of the tree without it.” If Rift knew where to find the seed in its hidden cradle in the colony tree, then he had to know what it was, what it meant to cut it out.

  “I see,” Karsis muttered. “Or, I don’t see. I don’t understand his thinking.”

  That makes two of us. The stench was getting worse; Moon couldn’t have scented a major kethel if it was breathing down his neck. The regular rush of wind grew louder as well. Moon reached the bottom of the shaft and hung there, trying to see what lay below.

  The drop was about two hundred paces to an uneven surface that looked like pitted and scarred paving. Heavy round pillars and blocky columns supported the foundations of the tower. In the dim green light he could see they were heavily covered with patchy molds and odd dark growths. Rift and Esom arrived just above them, and Esom said, “Karsis, are you all right?”

  “Quiet!” Karsis snapped, before Moon could. He listened intently to the wind. It had been repeating the same pattern the entire time they had climbed down the shaft: the sound would stop, there would be a long low rush, like something drawing breath, then it resumed. Like something drawing breath, Moon thought. Right.

  Karsis whispered, “That’s not what I think it is, is it?”

  “The leviathan. We’re right above its back.” Now that Moon knew what he was looking at, he could see that the pitted, scarred paving was actually the giant scaled hide of the leviathan.

  Karsis made a noise eloquent of disgust.

  From above them, Rift whispered, “It’s all right to walk on it. Its hide is too thick, it won’t feel us.”

  “How do you know that?” Esom asked.

  Rift didn’t reply, and Moon said, tightly, “Answer him.”

  Rift said in annoyance, “I’ve been down here before. How do you think I knew the way?”

  “That’s reassuring,” Moon said under his breath. He would just have to trust Rift now and beat the truth out of him later.

  Holding on with one hand, Moon wrapped his arm around Karsis’ waist again. Then he let go of the wall. As they dropped he snapped out his wings to soften the fall. They landed on one of the big scales. He was braced to leap back up to the shaft, but nothing happened. The whistling rush of the creature’s breathing continued undisturbed.

  He set Karsis on her feet. It took her a moment to unclench her hands from his collar flanges, and she wobbled on the uneven surface. He turned and scanned the dark space. It went on for a long distance. Apparently this area was the underpinnings of the city. It wouldn’t be the leviathan they had to worry about, but the parasites that might live down here, feeding off the garbage dropped from the buildings above and the growths on the leviathan’s hide. The creature’s stench made Moon effectively scent-blind, and the rush of its breathing masked slight sounds of movement.

  Rift dropped to the ground a few paces away, and dumped Esom on his feet. Esom staggered into Moon, jerked away, then self-consciously straightened his jacket. Rift pointed roughly east, back toward the tail of the creature. “That way. There’s a passage to the outside up there.”

  “Lead the way,” Moon said, pointedly.

  Rift flattened his spines in a way that suggested he was hurt at Moon’s distrust, and started away through the shadows. Moon controlled the urge to slap him in the head and followed.

  It was a long walk, nearly half the length of the city. They had to go at the pace of the two groundlings, who were moving as fast as they could, but the rough scales made for uneven and difficult footing. The vast support pillars loomed overhead, blossoming with ugly, bulbous growths, and several times they crossed broad, slimy trails, though they never saw the creatures that were leaving them. There were also gray shapes clinging to the ceiling that looked like giant tree frogs, like the ones
in the suspended forest. They might be just as harmless, but Moon doubted it on principle. Nothing attacked them, but Raksura were different and unexpected enough that the predators here might be cautious. For now, at least.

  Ardan’s men would have had to fetch ropes to get down the shaft, so they had a good lead by the time Moon caught the sound of voices. And unless Ardan had a way to magically detect them, there was nothing to show which way they had gone.

  Finally the space around them became more closed-in, the foundation pillars and supports much closer together.

  “There it is,” Rift said, “Do you smell it?”

  “Smell what?” Esom asked, stumbling.

  “Fresh air,” Moon told him. It was a draft scented of outside air, damp and fresh, an intense relief after the leviathan’s stench. “There’s an opening somewhere ahead.”

  “Finally.” Esom wiped sweat off his forehead. “I thought we were going to be stuck down here forever.”

  “I’d prefer it to going back to Ardan,” Karsis added.

  “Now do you trust me?” Rift said.

  “We’ll see.” Moon had no intention of committing himself on that point.

  Finally they were close enough for Moon to actually see the opening. The chamber narrowed to end at a bulwark of heavy stones, and there was an irregular patch of lighter darkness about midway up, just above a mound of rubble.

  But as they drew closer, Moon realized he could hear something else besides the rushing wind of the leviathan’s breath. It was a deep, hollow sound, regular and even. “Do you hear that?” he asked the others. His first thought was that it was something the leviathan was doing, though he didn’t even want to guess what bodily function could produce that sound.

  Rift stopped to listen, then said, startled, “It’s the bell. The warning bell. The leviathan’s going to move.”

  Esom swore in a strange language, then added in Kedaic, “There’s no telling how long it’s been ringing.”