by Martha Wells
Moon wasn’t buying that. “You said you could do it with the bridle. It’s a little late to change your story.” The man was as bad as Rift. Another wave washed down and sloshed partly into the sanctum. Ardan smiled tightly. “It was worth a try.” He pulled himself inside and staggered across to the plinth.
Moon climbed the side of the dome, up to where Chime crouched. The big room was even darker; the vapor-light stands in the lower part of the chamber had been swamped. Though it didn’t douse them, they didn’t put out much light under water. “Did you see Stone and Esom?”
Chime watched the swirling water below. A drowned groundling floated by, one of the blue-pearl guards. Chime grimaced. “No, where were they?”
“Behind a pillar, not far from the tunnel entrance.” Moon squinted to see through the shadows. “Esom lost the spell when the firepowder went off. They should have—”
A high-pitched roar echoed across the chamber. “Uh oh,” Chime said, nervously. “Now what?”
It came from the direction of the hole in the floor, the one Ardan had made above the leviathan’s blowhole. Moon had a bad feeling about that. “I hope that’s not what I think it is. Come on.” Moon jumped off the dome and headed toward the sound.
As they made their way from pillar to pillar, Moon saw Stone first, in the big dark shape of his Raksuran form. He was at the edge of the jagged opening in the floor, and struggled with something. Then they reached a pillar overlooking it, and the scene made Chime gasp in horror. “I thought we were done with these things!”
Big beetle-like parasites climbed up through the opening from below. The creatures had armor, spines around their mouths, big fangs. They must be coming up out of the area around the leviathan’s blowhole, driven by the water. Stone dodged around, slapped them back down into the opening.
“How long can he keep that up?” Chime wondered.
Not long enough, Moon thought, sick. At least Stone didn’t have to fight in water; it was all pooling down towards the other end of the chamber. The only other advantage seemed to be that the creatures only came up on one side of the opening, the side that was mostly in shadow, the side furthest away from the nearest vapor-light.
“I’ve got an idea. Light, they must hate light—”
Chime caught on immediately. “We get the lights, dump them down the opening—”
“Come on!”
They went back, unhooked the metal vapor-light chambers from the tops of the nearest poles, carried them to the opening, and flung them down into it. The parasites shied away from the light, shrieking in dismay, and proving the theory correct.
Fortunately, the big chamber had a lot of vapor-lights, and Ardan’s men must have lit more when they arrived. Moon’s world narrowed down to finding, carrying, passing Chime, throwing, and dodging the flailing claws of the parasites. Balm came to help, and Moon saw Rift at one point, carrying a lamp. He was glad Jade had stayed to guard Flower, and almost wished Balm had remained with her. He wasn’t counting Ardan out of this game yet.
The tide of parasites slowed, then stopped, and Stone clung panting to the sloping floor. Then abruptly the entire chamber rolled.
The pillar Moon had perched on suddenly changed from a slanted surface to a vertical one, and he slipped off and landed badly. A foulsmelling wave washed over him as the water that had collected at the other end of the chamber flowed back this way.
Nearby, Stone abruptly shifted back to groundling. Still sprawled on the floor, he demanded, “What was that?”
“The leviathan lifted its head,” Moon explained. Air thundered through the blowhole again as the creature expelled a breath, and they all hastily retreated from the edge of the opening.
“The floor’s still moving,” Balm said, stumbling a little as she joined them. “No, wait, the whole thing is moving.”
“Ardan must be sending the leviathan somewhere,” Moon said. “I gave him the bridle so he could stop it from going underwater.”
“I thought he couldn’t tell it where to go without the seed,” Chime said.
They all stared at each other, stricken. Stone dropped his head into his hands, and muttered, “Not again.”
“No, it can’t be.” Moon shook his head and dismissed the momentary fear. “He couldn’t have gotten back across the mortuary on his own, let alone gotten the seed from Flower and Jade.”
Stone said grimly, “I’ll make sure. And I’ve got to get Esom. I left him around here somewhere.” He jerked his head at Moon. “You three find out where Ardan’s sent this thing.”
Moon turned back for the sanctum with Balm and Chime, making slower progress through the big chamber now that it was in almost complete darkness. Most of the vapor-lights were down below on the leviathan’s skin, lighting the area around the blowhole.
The sanctum’s door was still open, and light shone out of it. They dropped silently to the floor about twenty paces away. Moon motioned for Balm and Chime to hang back. He went forward slowly, and eased up to the doorway to look inside.
Moon hissed, startled. Wasn’t expecting this.
Ardan lay curled on the floor near the plinth. His eyes stared in blank surprise, and he still held the bridle in one hand, his fingers clutched around it. Moon stepped closer and knelt, touched the body lightly, then moved the head. Blood pooled on the floor beneath it. He thought Ardan had been hit from behind, cracked with force on the lower part of the skull, below the protective crown of bone and pearl. The angle was wrong for a fall. He might have somehow struck the edge of the plinth, but he had died facing it.
Worry about it later, Moon thought. On impulse he took the bridle, gently freeing it from Ardan’s nerveless fingers, and then fled the sanctum.
Chapter Seventeen
With the leviathan mostly level again, the water had drained out of the tunnel, so they were able to escape the mortuary that way. But the passage out to the flooded street was now completely under water. They would have to make their way out through the underground.
They found the others waiting for them on the buttress below the edilvine tunnel opening, wet but otherwise unhurt. There was some water below on the leviathan’s hide, but not much, and it rapidly drained away.
There was a general expression of relief as Jade and then Flower dropped out of the tunnel. Then River, his spines and wings still dripping from the flood, demanded, “Did you get the—”
Flower held up the seed. That shut everyone up. They all gathered around and studied it reverently.
“It’s not hurt?” Vine asked, and elbowed Root aside to get a better look. “The groundlings didn’t ruin it?”
Flower tucked it securely under her arm and patted it fondly. “It’s fine.”
“But now what?” Still worried, Floret looked at Jade. “Is the sorcerer going to come after us for it? How do we get away from here?” “Ardan’s dead,” Moon said. He had told the others briefly on the way out, but he hadn’t gone into detail. He had his suspicions, he just wasn’t sure what to do about them yet.
There were murmurs of relief. Esom must have already told Karsis, because the two groundlings stood further down the buttress, talking excitedly in their own language. Jade said, “We still need a way off the leviathan.” Watching Esom and Karsis carefully, she stepped past the others to ask them, “You have a boat. Would you be willing to share it with us?”
Esom said, “If we go back to Ardan’s tower first.” His clothes and hair dripped from the flood, and he had taken off his cracked spectacles.
“Our people are still trapped there. With Ardan and his guards gone, we can free them. But only if we hurry and get there before the other magisters try to take it over.”
“If you help us, we can all get away,” Karsis added anxiously. “Our ship can take you all the way back to the forest coast, if you need it to.” Jade lifted a brow at Moon. In Raksuran, she said, “It’s a fair offer.” He nodded, and answered her in the same language, “They’ve helped us so far. And realistically, I don’t kn
ow if we could figure out how their ship works without their help.” And he didn’t want to strand them here. From what they had said, an ordinary boat wouldn’t be able to get
them back through the dangerous waters surrounding their homeland.
He switched to Kedaic to ask Esom, “What about Ardan’s spells, the warden-creatures, the barrier?”
“Those would have died with him,” Esom said. Then he grimaced uncertainly and added, “That’s how it generally works.”
Jade looked at Flower, who shrugged, then at Rift. She asked him, “Is that true?”
Rift seemed startled to be consulted. He said, “I don’t know.” Moon watched Esom, who looked tired and earnest. He could be lying but… But it would be stupid to lie about this, Moon thought. And he had never had the image of Esom as a very good liar, despite the fact that he had concealed his abilities from Ardan. He exchanged a look with
Jade, who hissed out a breath. She said, “Then we’ll go to the tower.”
They traveled through the dimly-lit underground, back to the well in the city foundations that led up into the lower level of Ardan’s tower. Moon led them up through the lichen-illuminated passage, back to the panel that opened into the first floor of the exhibit hall. It had been sealed again, and Esom stepped forward to whisper, “Wait, let me make sure…”
“I thought he said the magics would all be gone,” Root muttered in the back.
Moon snarled absently. If Esom was wrong about the tower being undefended, he didn’t know how they were going to free Negal and the other groundlings. Esom frowned, touched the door lightly, then ran his hand over it. Relieved, he said, “There was something here, I can feel the resonance, but it’s gone now.” He turned to Moon. “Ardan must have been hoping to catch us if we tried to come back this way.”
“Good.” Moon stepped past him to push on the door and felt it move just a little, enough to tell him there had been no attempt made to block it off from the other side.
“Wait.” Jade turned to face the others. Stone had had to shift back to groundling to fit through the last part of the passage. Everyone looked exhausted, wet, and worried, including the groundlings. She said, “Don’t kill anyone. We don’t want a war with these people.”
“They keep trying to kill us,” Drift protested.
“Because Ardan ordered them to,” Moon said impatiently. “He’s dead, and we can’t fight every groundling in this city. If they think we’re out to slaughter them, they’ll all band together against us.”
“And because I said so,” Jade added, and cuffed Drift in the head. She clearly wasn’t in any mood to put up with an argument. She nodded to Moon, and he and Vine pushed the panel out and lifted it away, letting in a spill of brighter light from the corridor. Moon was the first one out.
Moon took a deep breath of air only lightly tinged with the leviathan’s stench. After the underground and the mortuary, the polished floors and bright vapor-lights were a relief.
He led the way around and out from under the stairwell, to the main room. It seemed even bigger without the giant waterling, with the chains that had supported it hanging empty. The outer door was securely locked and barred, but there were no guards and no sound of movement anywhere. Most if not all of them must have gone with Ardan. Presumably the survivors would be looking for new jobs and wouldn’t be returning here.
“It feels empty,” Rift said, his voice hushed. “But the servants must still be here.”
Moon tasted the air. He caught only the scents of decay from the upper exhibit hall and the traces left behind of the giant waterling. “Somebody would have had to open the doors for Ardan and the others when they came back.”
Jade ordered, “Search the place, chase out any of Ardan’s people left behind, and find the prisoners.”
Leaving Jade and Chime behind to guard Flower and the seed, and Stone to watch the outside door, they all spread out to search the place floor by floor.
Moon followed the stairs up through the tower and opened every door he came to, breaking the locks if necessary. Vine flushed out the first frightened servant, and they quickly organized a system for chasing them out to the stairwell where Song or Root waited to make sure they ran all the way down and out the front door, where Stone made certain they left. They didn’t run into anyone who was armed; Ardan must have taken all his guards with him to the mortuary.
They were all hungry and drooping with exhaustion. The younger warriors were having difficulty keeping up, and Karsis had to tow Esom up the stairs. On the third floor above the exhibit halls they passed a foyer with a running fountain. Moon stepped into it just long enough to put his head under the spray and wash the last residue of the leviathan off his scales. It helped revive him a little. It had been a long time without sleep or real food, and he didn’t know how much longer he and the others could last.
They were in the upper levels of the tower, where the public rooms were, exploring a servants’ area near a second set of kitchens, when Balm stumbled on a heavily locked door that seemed to lead to a separate section of the level. They forced open the door to find a corridor with doors not unlike the guest quarters—except these doors had no open transoms to allow in light and air, and all had locks on the outside. “This could be it,” Esom breathed. He ran to the first door and pounded on it, shouting, “Negal? Orlis?”
Karsis took the other side of the corridor, pounding on each door. Midway down, someone inside shouted an incomprehensible answer and pounded back.
“It’s them!” Karsis fumbled at the lock as Esom ran to join her.
Balm glanced at Moon, got a nod, and went to help them. She broke the lock off the handle and ripped the door open.
Negal stepped out first, then stopped, astonished. He stared from Esom to Balm, Moon, and past them at Vine, who looked in from the foyer. Orlis and six other men crowded behind him. They were all a similar type of groundling, with dark hair and brown skin, dressed in worn clothes, with the thin, pinched look of people who had been away from the sun and fresh air for a long time. Smiling with relief, Negal said to Esom, “I take it the situation has changed drastically?”
Esom explained, “Ardan is dead, and we have an alliance with them, now.” He gestured vaguely toward Moon and the others. “Of course, most of the population of the island probably wants to kill us—”
Karsis cried, “But we’re alive and finally free!” She hugged Negal, overcome with emotion, and Moon and Balm hastily withdrew to the foyer. “Stay with them. Keep an eye on them,” Moon told Balm, speaking in Raksuran to avoid any awkwardness. “Make sure the others are as willing to be friendly as Karsis and Esom. And keep Rift away from them.”
Balm nodded understanding, and glanced back at the groundlings. “I will. Especially the part about Rift.”
Moon left her with them, took Vine, and continued the search.
In a stairwell foyer two levels up, they ran back into Floret and Song.
“I found some groundlings hiding in these rooms,” Floret said. “A woman, and some baby groundlings. The babies screamed when they saw me. When I shifted, they just screamed again.” Looking embarrassed, she admitted, “It’s a little upsetting. I don’t want to scare them anymore.”
She, Song, and Vine all stared expectantly at Moon. Song said, encouragingly, “You know how to talk to groundlings.”
Moon sighed. Warriors weren’t fertile and presumably had little experience with children. Except to play with them occasionally, and hand them back to the teachers when the babies got tired or hungry. “Wait out here. Stay back away from the door.”
Moon went into the anteroom. The statues carved into the walls were female, the first ones he could remember seeing here, draped with graceful swaths of fabric and, unlike the male statues, smiling faintly. He shifted to groundling, and staggered, nearly going to his knees. Every cut and bruise, every sore and strained muscle, was suddenly magnified
a hundredfold. He groaned, managed to straigh
ten up, and walked into the suite.
It was furnished even more finely than the other private rooms Moon had seen, with thick carpets and heavy hangings on the walls in patterns of soft colors. The wooden furniture was elegantly carved and set with polished mother-of-pearl, the vapor-lamps shaped into fanciful fish and seabirds. It smelled of the perfumes the wealthy groundlings here wore, cloying false-flowery scents, combined with a musk of fear. Moon heard muffled weeping and followed it back through the rooms
to a bedchamber. A young blue-pearl woman wrapped in a rich robe was huddled on the floor between the heavily draped bed and a carved chest, with four blue-pearl children of varying ages, all sniffling in terror. There was an elderly blue-pearl man and a woman huddled in with them, both dressed like servants.
Moon said to the young woman, “You have to leave now. Do you have somewhere to go? Your family’s house, maybe?”
She stared at him in confusion, the light blue skin around her eyes bruised with weeping. But some of the panic in her face subsided. If she had met Rift, she had to know Raksura could look like groundlings, but maybe she was only seeing Moon as a slender young man in dark clothing, and not a potential monster. Or maybe what he had said was so far from her worst fear that it had shocked her back to her senses. She said, hesitantly, “May I take anything?”
“Sure.” Moon figured she would probably need money. She glanced at the chest and Moon saw jewelry spilled across the top, silver chains with polished gemstones. He said, “Take all that.”
Moon waited while the woman and the two servants hurriedly swept the jewelry into a bag and collected clothing and a few other possessions. The activity seemed to calm them down, and he ended up helping one of the children extract a cloth doll from under the bed. He led them out to the foyer, where the woman flinched at the sight of the lurking Raksura, who all fled up the stairwell when Moon grimaced at them.
He shepherded the groundlings down the stairs, through the lower exhibit hall. Stone, in his groundling form, was standing beside the passage to the outer doors. The adults avoided looking at him, as if they were afraid to see some outward sign of what he was. But the children stared curiously, and Stone quirked a smile at them as they passed.
