The wall chains shook and something heavy groaned ominously. Above them the blocky shape of a cargo platform jolted into motion, blotting out the square of daylight as it creaked down the shaft. Celadon looked down and hissed. “That’s what they were waiting for!”
Moon looked and saw a black cloud of leathery wings, tails, claws, and teeth; the dakti swarmed up the shaft toward them like a dark wave.
There was no time to discuss it, no time to plan. Celadon swung over to one of the shaking wall chains that helped balance the moving platform. She ripped it out of the ring that held it to the wall and flung herself backward across the shaft. As the startled warrior flattened himself to the wall, Moon swung around and ripped out another supporting ring. The platform above jerked and flipped sideways amid a chorus of metallic snaps and ringing as the chains on the other wall took the full weight and broke.
Moon caught a passing slap from a chain that slammed him face-first into the wall. Dazed, he felt his claws lose their grip, but the warrior grabbed his arm and pulled him in as the wooden platform plunged past them.
The square window was right above them now, and the warrior dragged Moon up onto the sill. Moon crouched, blinked hard to clear his bleary vision, and looked down the shaft in time to see several dakti scrambling up the wall toward them. He slashed the first one across the face and throat; it tumbled backward but more followed. The warrior shouted at him to jump. Moon turned, and he and the warrior leapt out the window into a strong gust of wind.
Moon caught a glimpse of the flying boat, but for a few heartbeats he was too occupied with fighting to stay aloft to realize what he was looking at. Then details came into focus and he went cold with horror.
A major kethel clung to the carved cliff face above the flying boat’s anchorage, its claws hooked into the balconies and around the elegant pillars of the city’s façade. The giant creature’s form was similar to the dakti, armored-plated in the same way, but it had an array of horns crowning its huge head. It couldn’t be the one they had glimpsed inside the city; it was the biggest kethel Moon had ever had the misfortune to see, more than three times Stone’s size. It loomed over the flying boat, which was still wrapped in the folds of netting. He couldn’t see any movement on the deck.
“The others didn’t follow us!” the warrior called out above him. “Consort, you go on, I’ll wait—” The words dissolved in a sharp cry and the warrior folded and dropped like a rock. Something had struck him; the scent of blood came to Moon as he twisted sideways and grabbed the falling man’s outstretched arm.
The warrior’s dead weight jerked Moon down and he flapped hard to stay aloft, but the wind tossed him toward the cliff. He looked down, saw the warrior had shifted to groundling from shock and pain; blood stained his shirt on the right side of his chest. Projectile weapon, Moon thought with a snarl. He looked around and spotted a bladder-boat suspended in the air some distance away and headed rapidly toward them.
Moon pulled the warrior up into his arms, let the wind shove him sideways, and angled for a steep dive away from the city.
He heard the faint pop from the direction of the bladder-boat, twisted, and dropped to avoid another projectile. But a soft weight struck him and knocked him toward the cliff face.
Moon slammed into the rock, stunned, and felt his wings twist with the weight of whatever had hit him. Keeping hold of the warrior with one arm, he grabbed for purchase on the rock with the other. He caught a hold in the stone with his foot-claws and realized the thing that had hit them was a net made of heavy cord, a smaller version of the one that had trapped the flying boat. He ripped at it with his free hand but his claws slid off the metallic strands, and the entangling folds dragged painfully at his wings. He wrapped his free arm around an ornamental post projecting from a ledge and shifted to groundling just as he felt the bones in his wings bend.
He gasped as the pressure on his wings disappeared and his groundling body formed. He waited for the rush of pain from broken bones but it didn’t come. The net’s weight, his heavier body, and the warrior combined to strain his arm and shoulder, until it felt as if the joint was about to rip apart. But that was all. Just in time, he thought in relief. Broken wing bones would have translated to broken bones in his back, and the terror of that ran through his veins like icy water.
The bladder-boat had been too far away for a groundling to throw the net, so it must have somehow shot it at them like a projectile. That explains where the net that hit the boat came from, he thought.
The warrior regained consciousness enough to wrap his good arm around Moon’s neck. The scent of his blood was thick in Moon’s throat. He whispered, “Consort, what...”
“Just hold on.” Moon twisted as far as he could, ignoring the grinding pain in his shoulder. Ropes stretched up from the net towards the bladder-boat, still above them and coming down at an angle, now no more than a hundred paces away. They needed to get untangled from this net so Moon could shift and get them out of here. “What’s your name?”
“Dare,” the warrior gasped.
“Dare, can you kick the net away from—” Groundlings appeared at the bladder-boat’s railing and one lifted a bulky weapon with a long tube. And we need to get away now, Moon thought. He told Dare, “Don’t let go.”
The warrior tightened his grip. Moon lifted his legs despite the tangling net, braced his feet on the wall, and shoved off.
They fell until the ropes attached to the net caught and jerked them to a halt. Moon tore and dragged at the clinging folds and Dare kicked out. Moon felt the net loosen as it started to untangle, about to spill them out.
Then something dark closed around them.
Moon saw the huge claws arching over him and realized the major kethel had snatched them up in its hand. Dare strangled back a scream but in the next instant the creature dropped them.
They slammed into a wooden surface. Dare landed hard on Moon’s chest and knocked the air out of him. Moon got a breath into his aching lungs and quelled the panicked impulse to shift. The net was wrapped around his arm and neck, half-strangling him; it would be worse tangled on his spines and folded wings.
Dare gasped and choked. Moon managed to roll half over, easing the warrior to the side and taking some of the weight of the net off him. He was young, with light bronze skin and red-brown hair; he trembled violently from blood loss, his skin cold. Blood soaked his light-colored shirt, and Moon could feel it, slick and warm on his arms and chest.
Moon snarled and looked up. The kethel had dropped them on one of the open decks of the bladder-boat. The huge air bladder hung overhead and the rounded wall of a cabin was to one side. Two Aventeran groundlings stared down at them. Both were male, bundled up in knits and leather coats against the wind streaming over the deck, and both were armed with smaller projectile weapons. The stink of Fell clung to the wood. Moon bared his teeth.
One of the groundlings flinched and lifted his weapon. The other grabbed the barrel and pushed it away. “No, they’re wounded,” he said in Kedaic. It wasn’t until that moment that Moon realized it was Havram.
Dare curled up against Moon’s chest and Moon pulled him closer. He was dying; Moon could smell it. He grated out, “Why did you do this? We were trying to help you.”
The other groundling stared, as if he hadn’t expected Moon to be able to talk. Havram said, “We had no choice.”
Moon felt a footstep vibrate through the wooden boards, just before he sensed a Fell ruler. Dare whimpered and curled tighter into Moon’s chest.
A Fell ruler in groundling form stepped into view, looking down at them. He resembled Ivades in that he was tall and slim, his skin white as the palest marble, and the long hair tossed by the wind was dark and fine. But the gravity of his presence stopped Moon’s breath. This ruler was as old and powerful as Ivades had been young and foolish. Moon had never seen him before; it was a small relief, at least, that this ruler was not one of those he had seen with Ranea’s flight.
In Raksuran, b
ecause Fell always spoke the language of their prey, the ruler said, “Are you hurt?”
Moon hissed. “What does it look like?”
The ruler tilted his head at the groundlings and said in Kedaic, “You injured them.”
The other groundling said, “They were about to escape. I had to fire on them.”
Havram added, “This is what you wanted. Now take them and go.”
The ruler shifted, the effect different from a Raksuran, as if its body became liquid and flowed into the new shape. Its shifted form was larger than Ivades’ had been, its armored crest more prominent. It said, “So we shall go.”
It snapped out a clawed hand and slashed Havram’s head off, slapped the weapon out of the second man’s hand, caught him by the front of his jacket and slung him over the rail of the deck. Screaming erupted from the cabin behind Moon, then just as abruptly ceased. The ruler flicked the blood off its claws and said to Moon, “These creatures taste like carrion. They’re no use at all.”
The kethel’s hand swooped down again and snatched Moon and Dare off the deck. Moon would have screamed if he had time to gasp a breath; a heartbeat later he realized the kethel hadn’t crushed them. It was carrying them somewhere. The vibration of its powerful wingbeats traveled through the muscles of its arm.
The hand enclosing them shut out all but a little light shining through narrow gaps between the kethel’s claws. A little cool air leaked in, just enough to keep them from smothering in the sickening heat and stench of the creature’s skin. The net ground into Moon’s back and shoulders, and had to be exerting painful pressure on Dare’s wounds. Moon whispered, “It’s all right, try to hold on,” then felt Dare’s death rattle as the last breath left his lungs.
The kethel flew for some endless time. Moon fought down fear that threatened to choke him, forced himself not to struggle against the cooling weight of Dare’s body. If these Fell had the same plans as the ones who had stalked Indigo Cloud...
Finally the kethel landed, and Moon heard wind moving over rock, and less identifiable sounds. Then the slivers of light dimmed and altered, and he felt the kethel lean forward.
Its claws opened and Moon and Dare’s body spilled out and landed on a hard surface.
Dazed, bruised, and sticky with Dare’s blood, Moon tried to push himself up. He had been dropped on the deck of Delin’s flying boat; he recognized the color and texture of the wood. But the air was stale and thick, as if it had already been breathed once, and so heavy with the scent of Fell stench it was like trying to inhale dirt. He blinked hard to clear his vision, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes. The light was tinted a murky gray-red, as if it was falling through a piece of gut. Moon managed to roll half over and get a look at what was above the flying boat.
At first he thought it was a fog, or a heavily clouded sky. It was oddly mottled, thick, reddish-gray. Realizing what it was, he hissed in despair.
It was the inside of a sac, one of the containers made from the secretions of the kethel. From the fact that it was more than large enough to contain the flying boat, it must be the giant sac that Stone had seen. His eyes caught movement in the dimness and he saw dakti swarmed over the inside of it, working on a tear in the surface. The kethel must have had to open a slit to deposit Moon on the boat.
Moon pushed away from Dare’s body and tore at the net. Figures leaned over him, pulling at the cords; he flinched and snarled before he realized it was Floret and Chime and Saffron. They untangled the net, and Moon shook their hands off and shoved to his feet. Before Moon could speak, Chime shifted to groundling and flung himself into Moon’s arms. Moon stumbled, but stayed upright. Chime clutched him like a lifeline and sobbed once into his shoulder. Saffron crouched down to touch Dare’s face, then hissed in dismay as she realized he was dead.
They stood on the deck near the steering cabin. The interior of the sac was vast and murky, the air too warm and humid, laced with drifting mist. Supports like leafless branches crossed the vast space, made of more of the hardened secretion. The whole space was moving, the boat swaying a little with the force of the sac’s motion, nudged along with it by bumping against the supports. Moon’s sense of direction told him they were heading northwest, away from Aventera and the plateau, away from the Reaches.
Other shapes hung in the dimness; Moon caught a glimpse of something huge, like a flying island, but it was wrapped in some web-like secretion. Whatever it was, it looked horrible. Patting Chime’s back, Moon asked Floret and Saffron, “Who’s dead?”
“Horn is dead.” Saffron named one of the Opal Night warriors, her gaze still on Dare. Both she and Floret were wounded, with scratches and tears in their scales. “Ivory is hurt, badly.”
Moon growled a curse. “Who else is hurt?”
“Gallant, Tribute, and Fleet. And the younger ones, from Indigo Cloud—”
“Root and Song,” Floret supplied. “The Fell could have killed us all, but they stopped when Ivory went down.”
Saffron faced Moon, her spines flicking with anxiety. “Celadon and the others?”
“I don’t know. If they got away, I didn’t see them.” Moon took Chime by the shoulders and moved him away. Chime had bruises on his face, his neck, dark stains on his bronze skin. “Let’s get below.”
Saffron gathered up Dare’s body and started toward the stairs. In the doorway, Moon stopped Chime and let Floret and Saffron get ahead of them. He whispered, “What did Shade and Lithe do in the fight?”
Chime answered hurriedly, “I didn’t see. They were on the other end of the ship with Ivory and Saffron and the other Opal Night warriors. But they both had blood on their hands and teeth afterward, so they must have shifted to fight.”
Good. Moon started down the steps.
All the lamps belowdecks had burned out, but bits of cloth that had been spelled to make light were stuffed into the sconces. In a cabin on the other side of the passage, Saffron placed Dare carefully down next to the crumpled body of another young warrior.
The air was heavy with blood and sickness, detectable even over the stench of Fell. As Moon stepped into the main cabin, he found the wounded laid out on blankets on the floor at the far end of the room. He moved toward them, looking for Root and Song, sick at the thought of what he might see.
The warriors were all in their groundling forms, all deeply unconscious, their clothes bloody from the cuts that had rent their scales and transferred to their skin when they shifted. Root had a bad slash stretching from his collarbone down his left side. His eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets, his features sharpened as if the flesh had thinned and tightened. Except for the slow, almost imperceptible movement of his chest, he looked dead. Song was worse, slashed across the neck. Blood matted her curling hair, trickled down from the corner of her mouth.
Ivory was still awake, Shade supporting her head, Lithe kneeling next to her. Moon took one look at Shade’s face and gave up his last suspicion. Shade’s expression was set with shock, his eyes all pupil, his light skin so pale it was almost translucent. He looked like Flower had before she died.
Lithe’s eyes were wide, frightened, as if the effort of holding back panic was almost too much. She said, “Moon.” Her voice was thick with relief. “We thought—We were afraid—Is Celadon—?”
“We don’t know about the others yet,” Floret told her.
Moon knelt next to Ivory. “They’re all in a healing sleep?”
“Yes.” Lithe touched Ivory’s forehead. Moon could see the effort it cost her to pretend to be calm. “I need to send her into one, but she won’t let me.”
Ivory’s scent was bitter and coppery with blood, and her collarbone was broken. She was in her Arbora form, so there was no telling what damage had been done to her wings. Her scales were scratched and torn, the fingers of her right hand smashed, her claws broken.
She opened her eyes and focused on Moon. Her voice grating with pain, she said, “Where’s Celadon?”
As she spoke, he saw she still had
blood on her fangs. “Either dead or free, flying to Malachite and the others.”
With her good hand she reached over and squeezed his wrist, hard enough for his bones to grind together. “I hope everything they said about you was true.”
Me, too, Moon thought. What he wanted to do was huddle in a corner and quietly panic, or loudly panic, but he couldn’t afford to.
She raised her voice enough to say, “Saffron. Until I wake, obey this consort as if his words are mine.”
Saffron gave Moon a wary glance, but said, “I will, Ivory.”
Ivory sank back against Shade and closed her eyes. Shade made a frightened sound, like a fledgling.
Biting her lip in concentration, Lithe put a hand on Ivory’s brow. Ivory’s body gradually relaxed, her breathing grew even and slow, the lines of pain on her face smoothed away. Lithe sighed at the effort and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know if she’ll live. She has a chance, if—” She cut the words off.
If the Fell leave her alone, Moon thought. They might all be dead in the next few moments.
As Lithe and Shade laid Ivory down on the blanket, Moon got to his feet. He looked around and realized the others were staring at him. Right, he was in charge. To get his thoughts in order more than anything else, he said, “The Fell knew we were coming here, knew about the trap.”
Lithe sat back and pushed the sweaty hair off her face. “But how? The crossbreeds, I know what you think, but we didn’t—”
“That’s not what I think,” Moon interrupted.
Chime said, “You think this is the same thing that happened at Indigo Cloud.” He folded his arms tightly and his voice trembled a little, but he didn’t look as bad as Shade. “That these Fell have crossbreeds of their own, a mentor-dakti who guided them here.”
“It would explain a lot.” Experimentally, Moon shifted to his winged form, then back to groundling. “But we can still shift.”
“Or maybe they just haven’t bothered with us yet,” Chime said, and glanced nervously up at the deck.
Saffron, Lithe, and Shade all followed his gaze.