Chime paused to pick up Lithe, and he and Moon sprang into flight.
They landed at the top of the hall, near the groundling’s corpse. The body was stretched out, its spaded skull lying on its side, skeletal arms outstretched. Moon didn’t see any reason why it should be dead. He looked up, but there was no platform or doorway above that it could have fallen out of. It was like something had struck it from behind and flattened it. Beyond the body, the hall stretched out ahead for about a hundred paces, then curved out of sight.
Malachite glanced over the body, then started down the hall. But Chime said, “Wait.”
Moon looked at him and saw his spines trembled. Chime said, “I just heard the voice again. It’s much clearer this time. It’s saying ‘I’ll give you the... something. Teach you power.’” Chime’s whole body shuddered, as if trying to shake off the words. “This is very creepy.”
“At least we know we’re on the right trail,” Lithe said, looking uneasily ahead.
Malachite just started down the hall, but this time she was at least moving more slowly.
They made their way through a series of turns that could have been confusing except for the three other dead groundlings they found to point the way. One hall had a long window to the outside, revealing a few rocky underwater peaks and some drifting semi-transparent creatures like flowers with fins. Close up Moon could see the crystalline substance wasn’t as clear as it looked. It was shot through with hundreds of nearly translucent fibers, like a root system. He paused long enough to lay his hand on the crystal, then jerked back. The material felt weirdly warm and alive and rippled faintly under his touch. Chime watched, wide-eyed, and murmured, “This place is even stranger than it looks.”
As they reached another curving hall, Moon heard a voice and felt his spines flick involuntarily as he recognized the progenitor. He didn’t need to tell Malachite that there were Fell somewhere ahead. She slowed and dropped into a crouch.
At the end of the hall was a round doorway looking down into another large chamber. It had more of the narrow crystalline windows streaking the outer wall. All the curves in their path had taken them some distance down and around. Moon thought they were on the side of the island facing away from shore.
As they edged closer, Moon got a view of the floor of the chamber, some fifty or so paces below. He saw the progenitor and Thedes and four other rulers, and he saw Shade, but the thing they faced captured his gaze so thoroughly all he could do was stare.
In the center of the chamber was something like the bulb of the giant version of a sea-flower, that stood nearly forty paces high. It sat on a nest of vines, some dark and pulsing, others withered and dead. The big white petals at the front had been pulled down, allowing a view of the interior. It was filled with the multitude of writhing stems that in a small sea-flower caught tiny water creatures as prey. This one had prey, too.
The creature caught inside it was big, as large as Stone’s shifted form. But it looked like Shade, like the image in the crystal piece the Fell had shown them. The same dark scales, the armored crest and huge mane of spines.
Malachite drew back from the doorway and so forgot herself as to exchange a look with Jade.
Lithe and Chime stared wide-eyed. Jade whispered what they were all thinking, “Can that really be an ancestor of us and the Fell?”
Malachite shook her head, but it was a gesture of grim realization, not denial. “But why is it here?”
Moon had to ask, “Why would our ancestors live underwater?”
“They wouldn’t.” Jade risked another peek. “Maybe this... ancestor was captured by the species who lived here, and left behind when they died.”
Moon didn’t buy that. “This place is designed for things that fly. We haven’t seen any stairs, anywhere.”
Chime nodded. “And there are these jewel lights, and all these flowers bringing air down here. They make me think of the flower lights in Emerald Twilight.”
Moon thought Chime was onto something. This place was strange, but maybe not entirely unfamiliar. “They do whole trees at Opal Night.”
Lithe said, “That’s just an ordinary mentor’s skill. At least, it is here in the Reaches. It’s been passed down forever.”
And everyone believed that mentors got their abilities from interbreeding with consorts. Moon thought, And Stone said it was the Arbora who made the seeds to transform mountain-trees into colony trees. Maybe this place had been transformed out of the rock of the island itself, with their ancestors’ equivalent of mentors’ magic.
Chime said, “But if our ancestors did build this place, who’s been renewing the spells?”
Lithe looked up at the nearest air plant, spread across the ceiling of the chamber. “Maybe they don’t need to be renewed. Maybe they’re just that powerful.”
The scales of Jade’s brow furrowed as she reconsidered. “They might have had a good reason for building it underwater. To hide something, maybe. Or hide from something.”
Lithe said, “The flower has to be magically sustaining that... person. So he was trapped inside it, all this time?”
Chime seemed uneasily fascinated by the scene below. “He must have called those groundlings to him somehow. Maybe their boat came too close.”
Lithe bounced, excited at unraveling the mystery. “But then the groundlings couldn’t let him out, because only one of his own species, or someone who was close to that species, like a Fell-Raksura crossbreed, can open the trap. Then something happened, and the groundlings fled.”
Chime bounced too. “If his body’s been sleeping, but he can still think, and he’s been here all these turns—”
“If he wasn’t raving mad when he was put in there, he is now!”
“Yes,” Malachite cut through their speculation. “But why was he put here in the first place, in an underwater prison, that only a member of his own species could unlock?”
Everyone went still, thinking over that. Moon supplied the obvious answer. “Because somebody powerful wanted to punish him, and it wasn’t safe to put him anywhere else.” The forerunner hadn’t made groundlings flee and die and Fell attack Raksura to create crossbreeds because its intentions were good.
Malachite gave him a head tilt of approval.
Jade said, “How do we know for certain?”
“Perhaps I’ll ask it, after I kill the Fell.” Malachite stood, spread her wings, and sprang out to drop to the floor of the chamber.
Chime and Lithe recoiled in shock. Jade made a choking noise that seemed to combine rage and astonishment. Moon just stared. “Didn’t expect that,” he admitted. In hindsight, he probably should have.
Jade snarled and leapt after Malachite, and Moon followed.
He landed on the floor, every nerve alert. The progenitor and the rulers had swung to face them at Malachite’s sudden appearance. The Fell were all in their winged forms but Shade was still a groundling. Thedes had caught him by the neck and held a clawed hand to his throat, probably the only reason Malachite hadn’t started ripping Fell apart yet.
Shade hadn’t shifted because he looked like he was about to drop from exhaustion. His pale skin was gray-tinged and there were dark bruises under his eyes, his clothes were torn and filthy; he stared at Malachite as if he thought he was hallucinating her. Of course, Moon thought, they haven’t been feeding him. Faced with the choice of groundling meat or nothing, Shade must have chosen nothing. The Fell could have forced him to eat by threatening Moon and the others, but they had wanted him weak.
Malachite paced deliberately toward the progenitor. Moon had never seen anyone or anything look at a Fell like that. Like Fell were intriguing prey, tricky to catch, but not impossible.
The progenitor didn’t react, though Moon thought he could see tension gather in her body. The progenitor said, “You hate us very much. We must have done something terrible to you.”
“You took my consort and destroyed my court.” Malachite tilted her head and smiled. “Don’t try to get inside m
y mind. I might let you.”
Moon sensed more than saw an uneasy stir among the rulers. Malachite wasn’t acting the way they expected, and it unnerved them. It’s not a pose. Malachite’s not afraid, and the Fell know it. He wondered if that was what Malachite had been doing for the turn she had stalked the Fell flight. Learning about them, learning how to resist their influence to the point where it didn’t exist for her, learning contempt for them instead of fear. Maybe that was the key to defeating the Fell, that your mental attitude was everything.
The progenitor didn’t draw back, but Moon could sense her regroup. She said, “Why are you here? It does not want Raksura.”
“You know why I’m here. You have something that belongs to me.” Malachite didn’t look at Shade, holding the progenitor’s gaze as if holding her captive, but her meaning was clear. “Why haven’t you let your guide out yet?”
“Perhaps we never meant to.”
Malachite’s spines rippled in amusement. “This is a long way to come for nothing.”
“Other flights found the way for us. Our part was easy.”
Moon threw a look at Jade and saw her attention was entirely focused on Thedes and Shade. She’s waiting for an opportunity. But Thedes might be too old and clever for that. He would know the only thing keeping the Fell alive was the threat to Shade.
Malachite said, “You took advantage of their failures.”
The progenitor inclined her head. “Yes.”
“So why have you changed your mind?”
The progenitor said, “The guide told us it could teach us new powers, give us powerful weapons to defeat the prey who have weapons of fire and projectiles. It told us it had slept for a long time, and only recently woken, and was anxious to help us eat the world.” That was hardly surprising. The only thing the Fell would be truly interested in were ways to eat groundling cities more efficiently, with less danger to the progenitors and the rulers.
“And to destroy Raksura,” Malachite added.
The progenitor seemed to feel that was just an extra benefit. “And that. But we are here and it will not teach.”
Moon couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. He said, “Ask it what it offered the groundlings to get them here. They didn’t let it out, and it killed them.”
The progenitor didn’t look at him, but answered, “The prey could not let it out. It did not know then that the cage could only be opened by one of its own species.”
A strange prison. It could only get free if another member of its species came for it. And nobody came, Moon thought. If whoever had trapped it here had been trying to make a point, then the point had certainly been made.
Malachite hadn’t taken her gaze off the progenitor, but Moon sensed more of her attention had shifted to the creature trapped inside the flower. She said, “But what did it offer the groundlings? The same thing it offered you?”
The progenitor said, “We are people. They were prey.”
That must be a “no,”Moon thought. “Then why haven’t you let it out already? You know it’s a trick, now. You know it won’t teach you powers. You know there aren’t any weapons here. This place is empty. If there were any weapons, the groundlings took them when they fled.”
Malachite must have decided she had heard enough. In the same even tone, she said, “Give us Shade, and we’ll leave you alive.”
The progenitor was equally calm. “You would never leave us alive.”
Malachite showed her fangs in approval. “You aren’t as foolish as you appear.”
Her voice trembling with urgency, Lithe said, “Malachite, why hasn’t the forerunner tried to stop us from having this conversation?”
There was a moment of stillness. The Fell didn’t react.
Malachite’s eyes narrowed. “Shade, did anything happen when you first came into this room?”
“The flower opened,” Shade said, his voice a weak croak. “I don’t think that was a good thing.”
Uh-oh, Moon thought. Chime whispered anxiously, “Maybe it doesn’t need anything but Shade’s presence. Maybe it’s been waiting for the spell, or whatever it is, to finish.”
Malachite must have agreed. She snarled. “Give me Shade and we will all leave here alive.”
There was no warning. The flower opened. It was like a too-near lightning strike, like the explosion when the dakti had thrown Delin’s bag of projectiles into the fire, but without light or heat. A wave of invisible force crossed the chamber, flattening everything in its path. It knocked Moon onto his back and bounced him off the floor. He flashed on an image of the dead groundlings up in the hall, stretched out flat, and the others huddled in the hut they hadn’t been able to escape in.
The force passed on, leaving Moon gasping for air, shivering in reaction. He rolled to one elbow, trying to get his body to work enough to stand. His blurry vision cleared and he saw everyone sprawled on the floor, including the progenitor and the rulers. The Fell who had been closest to the flower lay like they were dead, but he saw with relief that the Raksura were dazed but trying to move. Then he saw the forerunner.
It stood in front of the sea-flower, watching them. He couldn’t read any emotion in its face or spines; it might have been a statue.
Malachite suddenly pushed to her feet, spines flared, breathing rough. She said, “What are you?”
One of the rulers rolled over and stood, its movement jerky and abrupt. Its jaw opened and it rasped out, “I am your ancestor.”
Malachite’s spines rippled in what Moon could only interpret as wary disbelief. He felt cold settle in the pit of his stomach. The forerunner was speaking through the ruler, the way rulers could speak through dakti and kethel.
Chime and Lithe both managed to sit up, leaning against each other for support. Shade still lay sprawled near the unconscious Thedes, and out of the corner of his eye Moon saw Jade push herself up to her hands and knees and stretch to grab Shade’s ankle. One eye on the forerunner, she pulled Shade toward her. The creature didn’t try to stop her.
Dazed, Shade started to fight, then opened his eyes enough to see her. He struggled toward her and Jade pushed him behind Moon, then stumbled to her feet. Moon managed to sit up all the way, but he didn’t think he could stand yet. “Are you all right?” he whispered to Shade. Shivering, Shade nodded against his shoulder.
The ruler said, “I’ve waited so long. They meant me to sleep forever, but I woke.” Its eyes were closed, its face and body slack; it looked dead. The other Fell stirred weakly. The progenitor lifted her head, her tail lashed, and she fixed her dark gaze on the forerunner.
Jade flicked a quick glance at Moon and he gave her a sharp nod. He could move if he had to and help the others.
Malachite studied the creature intently. “That’s what you told the Fell,” she agreed. “Why didn’t the groundlings let you out? You called them to you, taught them how to find this place, to use the air plants to reach you.”
Yes, that was what Moon was wondering, too. This was not going how an encounter with an ancestor of their species should go, as far as he could tell. Maybe Lithe and Chime were right and the forerunner was raving mad. Maybe it was worse than that.
The dead ruler said, “They couldn’t solve the puzzle. You are far more clever.”
Jade said bluntly, “So the groundlings ran away and died.”
Lithe shook her head. “And we didn’t do anything, didn’t solve any puzzle,” she said, her voice a bare whisper.
From behind Moon, Shade whispered, “Neither did the Fell. They just stood there, talking to it, but I couldn’t hear its answers.”
Jade said, “It’s lying. The only thing it needed to get out was for Shade to come close enough.”
The ruler said, “I will help you defeat these terrible creatures, all across the worlds.”
Malachite hadn’t looked away from the forerunner but Moon felt she knew exactly where they all were, and was thinking furiously. She said, “Then why have you conspired with them all this time?”
“I had no choice.” There was emotion in the words now, and the Fell ruler trembled as the voice was forced from its throat. “The Raksura could not hear me, and I had to be free.”
Malachite was unmoved. “We have paid dearly for your freedom.”
“I will repay my debt. I will help you destroy the Fell.”
Malachite tilted her head, but her expression gave nothing away. Jade said, “Yet you told the Fell you would help them destroy us.”
“I had to lie. Have you not lied to these creatures, to survive?”
That hit home for Moon. But looking past the captive Fell, at the forerunner itself, he thought, It stands so still. Why doesn’t it move?
It continued, “Come with me to the surface of the island. I have proof there, hidden weapons and resources. I will give them to you.”
Lithe nudged Chime. “Chime, what is it?”
Chime was staring at the creature, squinting as if it was hard to see, though it wasn’t more than twenty paces away. “It’s not... It isn’t... This is not its true form.” His voice trembled. “I can see two of it.”
Malachite hissed out a breath. She asked it, “Are you deceiving us? What is your true form?”
The progenitor lunged upright. Moon flinched back, pushing Shade behind him, but the progenitor charged the forerunner. She struck it in the chest, hard enough to stagger it back. The rulers sprang at it in her wake—and it changed.
Its body softened and blurred and flowed into another shape, larger, dark and fluid, with more limbs than it had had before. It lifted a double set of wings and bared an enormous array of fangs though its body was so amorphous Moon couldn’t tell where its mouth was. It flung one of the rulers away, the body shredded into bloody fragments.
Malachite spun and snapped, “Go!”
Moon grabbed Shade and sprang for the door. Shade’s groundling body was heavier than Moon had been expecting and he hit the bottom edge of the doorway, just able to catch it with his claws. Shade curled against him, holding on with all his remaining strength, holding his breath as if that would help. Moon hauled them both up into the corridor and Shade gasped with relief.