River hadn’t been in favor of the plan. “You’re trusting a groundling thief,” he had said. “That’s almost as bad as trusting the solitary.”
Jade just ignored his objections, and Moon didn’t have an argument either. The only basis they had for trusting Esom was that he would be a fool to betray them to Ardan.
Then Floret climbed down the wall, followed by Flower. Jade hissed, startled and angry. “What are you doing here? Who’s watching the solitary?”
“Root and Song and the groundling woman,” Floret said, her flattened spines conveying guilt and chagrin.
“The groundling woman?” Jade repeated incredulously. “Are you—”
“I made her bring me,” Flower interrupted, sounding brisk. She shifted to groundling and shook out her dress. “It smells foul here. Where’s this barrier you’re all babbling about?”
Silence fell. Moon scratched under the frills behind his ear and kept his mouth shut. After a moment, Jade said through gritted teeth, “Floret, get back to the tower.”
Floret fled.
Jade made an effort to drop her ruffled spines. She said, “You should be resting. You’ve been ill since we reached the coast, whether you’ll admit it or not.”
“I can rest later.” Flower crossed the terrace to the threshold of the doorway, and Stone shone the light on it for her. She nodded and glanced at Chime thoughtfully. “Something’s there, all right. It smells of groundling magic.”
Chime shrugged uneasily. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just a good guess.”
Stone snorted, but didn’t otherwise comment.
Esom edged forward and frowned at the barrier. Moon switched to Kedaic, asking him, “Can you see it?”
“No, but I can feel it.” He held out a hand, carefully not reaching past the doorway. “It’s similar to the barrier around Ardan’s tower.”
“Can you get us past it?” Jade said, her voice tight with impatience.
“I can try.” Esom looked around at them all, his expression grim. “I was never able to get outside Ardan’s tower to try with that barrier. Tampering with this one could alert Ardan.”
River hissed angrily, as if they hadn’t all thought of that earlier. “If it does—”
“If it does,” Moon cut him off, and finished to Esom, “Then you’ll know, for when you go back to his tower to get your friends.”
Esom glanced nervously at River, but said, “That’s a good point.” He stepped forward, hands out, and eased across the threshold, right up to the line of debris that marked the barrier. He crouched down and slid his hands along the pavement.
Moon stepped to the side to see his face. Esom’s eyes were shut in concentration, and sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cool air. Flower cocked her head, as if listening to something the rest of them couldn’t hear. Chime watched intently, obviously straining his senses to feel what Esom and Flower felt.
Esom turned his head, and said in a hoarse whisper, “Be ready. I won’t be able to keep it open very long.”
Jade turned to the others. “Vine and Drift will stay here on watch. The rest of you will come with us.”
Vine, hanging upside down from the edge of the terrace roof, said worriedly, “Be careful.”
Moon happened to look at Balm in time to see an expression of relief cross her face. She had been afraid Jade would leave her behind.
Then Esom slowly eased to his feet and held his arms out as if lifting an invisible curtain. As Esom stood, Moon felt a breath of cooler air, tinged with decay and incense and mold. It was a draft that had been held back by the barrier, now flowing from the doorway. It was more confirmation that Esom was performing as promised.
Esom stepped in, pushed the barrier above his head. He gasped, “Now!”
Moon lunged forward, halted at the threshold as Jade beat him there and slipped past Esom. He followed her, Chime and Flower behind him. River and Balm ducked past Esom, then Stone. Esom stumbled suddenly, staggered forward as if something heavy had fallen on him. Breathing hard, he moved further down the ramp, away from the barrier. “I think… I think it’s all right. Hopefully Ardan didn’t sense that.”
Jade said, “You didn’t have to come in here. You could have waited outside with Vine.”
Esom leaned against the wall, still catching his breath. He made a helpless gesture. “I meant to, but it got a little much for me. It was easier to go forward than back.”
“You can say that about a lot of things,” Flower said in an aside to Chime.
“Then you’d better come with us,” Jade told Esom. She took the lightrock away from Stone and started down the ramp.
Moon had somehow assumed Stone was staying behind. Unable to stop himself from sounding accusing, he said, “Why did you come? This place is too small for you to shift.”
Even in the dark, he could tell Stone was giving him that look. “That’s none of your business.”
“It’s my business if you collapse the ceiling on us.”
“Both of you, quiet,” Jade snapped.
Chapter Fourteen
The ramp curved down into darkness, the stale air heavy with the scent of old and new decay. The light caught carvings rimed with mold: processions carrying biers, faces twisted in pain and grief.
In the dark it was it hard to tell, but they all looked like the blue-pearl groundlings. Maybe they lived here first, Moon thought, and the others all came later. Maybe it was their crazy idea to tame a leviathan. He suspected many of their descendants had cause to regret it.
They were some distance below street level when their light fell on an opening in the wall that looked as if it had been roughly chiseled out. It stank of edilvine that was gradually fermenting into something else, and as Jade stepped inside they saw bundles of the vine, stuffed into vats filled with dark liquid. Esom made a gagging noise, clapped a hand over his mouth and nose, and retreated back to the corridor.
“That’s the drug,” Stone said, and stepped past him. “It smells like that wine bar.”
The stink of it was intense, but it wasn’t having any ill effect on Moon or the other Raksura.
“That’s not what we want.” Jade turned away, hissing in frustration.
Moon glanced at Chime just in time to see him flinch, as if something had suddenly poked him. “Are you all right?” Moon asked, as they followed Jade down the ramp.
“Yes.” Chime kept his voice low. “It’s that… thing I told you about. It’s worse here.”
Chime meant he was sensing the leviathan again. Unlike Chime’s flash of insight about the barrier over the door, Moon didn’t see how an awareness of the leviathan could help them. It wasn’t like they didn’t know the creature was here. Though maybe Chime would be able to give them warning if it was about to move again.
“What thing?” Flower demanded from behind them.
“You didn’t tell her?” Moon said, his attention on the corridor ahead. It still sloped down, curving back toward where the mortuary temple lay on the surface.
Chime protested, “I didn’t have a chance—”
Then Jade said, “Quiet, there’s light ahead.” She handed the light-rock back to Stone, who tucked it away in his pack. After a moment, Moon’s eyes adjusted, and he saw the dim white glow somewhere down the corridor.
Following it, they found the passage ended in a wide doorway that led to a much bigger space, scented of earth and cold water and more decay.
They stepped through and made their way down a crumbling set of steps into a cavernous chamber, the ceiling curving up out of sight. It was lit by fading mist-lights, their vapor heavy in the air. The lamps stood on metal stands only ten paces high and secured to the floor with clamps, leaving most of the chamber in heavy darkness. Dozens of thick, square pillars supported the ceiling, and every surface Moon could see, the walls, the pillars, was covered with plaques carved with unintelligible writing. It felt like a deep underground cavern, but they hadn’t come down nearly far enough for this space to be complet
ely below the surface. “We’re under that dome,” Moon said softly.
Her tail lashing, Jade turned to Balm, River, and Chime. “Scout this place.”
River flicked his spines in annoyance, but he leapt to the nearest pillar, and scrambled up to jump to the next. Esom ducked nervously as River passed over his head. Balm and Chime bounded away in different directions. Moon tasted the air, but the stench of decay and the competing odor of the fermenting edilvine overlaid any more subtle scents.
Jade looked around again, thoughtful. “This carving—is it writing?”
“It’s in the city’s native language. I think it’s names, the names of the dead.” Esom stepped closer to the nearest column and squinted to see in the dim light. “The plaques must cover their burial vaults.”
Moon wondered why the inhabitants of this place had chosen that method. He had seen groundling cities that stacked their dead in aboveground mortuary vaults, and it never seemed like a good idea to him. For a city on the back of a leviathan, it was worse. But it might be a holdover from their homeland of Emriat-terrene, an attempt to show their dominance over the leviathan by keeping the same customs they had practiced on solid ground.
Flower frowned. “So this is where the dead are supposed to be put, and instead they sell them to water travelers?”
“That’s the rumor,” Stone said, suspiciously studying the shadows overhead. “From the death-stink in that passage, I’d say the rumor’s true.”
Moon said, “They can’t be selling all their dead.” Surely the water travelers had to have some other food source besides dead groundlings from this city. “Maybe just the ones who can’t pay for a place here.” Or maybe there was no room left, all the space taken up with the ancient bones of turns and turns of dead.
Flower lifted a brow, dubious. “You have to pay for a place to be dead in?”
Moon shrugged. “Sometimes, in cities. It’s a groundling thing.”
Balm bounded back to Jade’s side and reported, “There’s a stairway and a passage, but it goes up, toward the doorway in the plaza that the groundlings were guarding.”
“There has to be a trap at that entrance,” Moon said. Ardan would be expecting them to come in that way, and had placed the barrier at the water traveler dock to keep them from using it as an escape route.
Scrabbling sounded overhead, and River’s voice called out, “There’s something here!”
They crossed the dark space, following River’s progress back over the ceiling, Esom sprinting to keep up.
They were headed toward the center of the huge chamber, toward an open space ringed by more pillars. In the very center, standing on the paving, was a tall, domed structure made of stained, coppery metal. It stood forty paces high, and was at least that wide. Wrapped around the verdigrised metal was a figured sculpture of a sea serpent, coiled over the curve of the roof. Its triangular head hung over the top and glared sightlessly down at them.
“This is what you want,” Esom said, breathing hard as he caught up to them. “This looks like part of another structure, much older than the mortuary.”
As the others spread out to examine the structure, Moon stepped close to look at the surface. The metal showed pitting and discoloration that might be from harsh weather, as if it had been exposed to the elements for turns before the mortuary temple had been built atop it. He felt air move across the scales on his feet and looked down at the base of the dome. There was a gap there, too regular to be a crack, and it seemed to stretch all along the foot of the metal shell. “He’s right—it’s not sitting on the floor. The floor’s built around it.”
Jade had circled the dome and returned to stand next to Moon. “We’re close; we have to be,” she muttered. “Does anybody see a door?”
Chime arrived a moment later and dropped lightly down from the ceiling. “I found a small passage going off toward the east, but there were no lights, so I couldn’t tell—” He stared at the dome, then threw an uncertain glance at Jade. “We think the seed is in there?”
“We think something’s in there,” Flower said in frustration, and flattened her hands against the discolored metal.
Then Balm leaned close to one of the metal coils of the serpent. “Wait, I think there’s a seam under here. Someone come and—”
“Quiet.” Flower turned suddenly and stared intently into the shadows past the pillars. The tension in her body made Moon turn to follow her gaze, but the shadows were empty. The air was undisturbed, not even by a drift of dust motes in the mist-light. The stillness made an uneasy prickle creep up under his spines. Then Flower said, “Something’s coming.”
The others stirred uneasily. Stone shifted, the sudden blur of dark mist making Esom flinch and stifle a yelp. Looming over them, Stone took in a breath with a hiss.
River shook his head, but watched the darkness warily. “There’s nothing here. We searched.”
Flower didn’t even glance at him. Her voice had a grim edge. “It’s coming through the air.”
“The wardens,” Moon said. They had known this place might be under their protection. “Ardan’s guard creatures.” But even as he said it, he felt a shiver across his scales as the air turned cold and dry, as if something was drawing the damp out of the stone surfaces. That hadn’t happened when the wardens had appeared in Ardan’s tower.
Impatient, Jade told Flower, “You look for a way to get into this damn thing while we kill these creatures.”
Moon said, “Getting out of the temple is going to be the problem.” The air grew tight, making it a little difficult to breathe. Ardan could have put a hundred of the things down here. “We don’t know how many—”
“Getting out is not the problem,” Flower said flatly. She shifted to her Arbora form, her scales white as bone, catching no gleam from the light. “That’s the problem.”
It formed out of the darkness just past the pillars, a shape so large its head brushed the lowest point of the ceiling’s arch. Moon’s spines flared and he snarled in astonishment as the diaphanous shape solidified into blue scales and massive clawed hands. He saw the fish-like tail with giant fins, stretched away between the pillars. It was the giant waterling that hung in Ardan’s tower. From the sickening scent that wafted from it, it was still dead.
It went from insubstantial to solid faster than Moon could shout a warning. It lunged forward with a muffled roar, its unhinged jaw gaped. Stone flared his wings, leaping at its face.
The waterling roared, flung up an arm to push Stone away, but the distraction gave them all a chance to move. Jade snatched Flower out of the creature’s path and fell back as the others scattered. Moon darted forward and dodged the giant hand that slammed down a pace from his tail. That too-close look told him it was only too true. The creature was still dead. Its scales were discolored. The flesh around its gnarled claws gray with putrefaction. He jumped over its hand, raked it with his feet claws in passing. It snarled, turned toward him and away from Chime, who had just grabbed Esom and bounded away. Stone hit the waterling’s face again, and as it batted him away Moon ducked under its arm, bolted across the floor, and leapt up to the pillar where the others had taken cover.
They all clung to the far side, with Jade, Balm, and River peering around the corner at the waterling. Flower had pulled away from Jade and hooked her claws into the carving to support herself. Chime crouched above her, clutching a terrified Esom. Stone had retreated to the opposite side of the chamber. Hanging from a pillar, he lashed his tail and growled to keep the waterling’s attention.
Moon climbed around River, who hissed, “What is that thing?”
“We can kill it.” Balm clung to the pillar next to Jade, watching the creature with predatory speculation. “It’s not as bad as a major kethel.”
“But it’s already dead,” Moon told them. “It was hanging in Ardan’s tower, stuffed.”
“He’s right,” Esom seconded miserably from above them. “It’s been reanimated, somehow, or this is a spirit-construction. I re
ally have no idea how Ardan did this.”
Jade and Balm stared at Moon and he said, “Me neither.”
Flower said, grimly, “There’s nothing I can do.”
“Then how do we get past it?” Chime asked, frantic. “The serpentdome—”
“We’ll take care of this thing. You, Flower, and the groundling get the dome open,” Jade snarled.
“How?” River demanded.
“Go for its face, distract it so Stone can attack.” She tensed to spring off the pillar. “Now!”
Jade, Balm, and River took the direct route and sprang from pillar to pillar. Moon swarmed up to the ceiling, then jumped rapidly from carving to carving to drop down on the waterling’s head just as the others hit it in the face and shoulders. It roared and flailed at them, then Stone hit it from behind, slamming into its back to dig his claws into its scales.
Its tail flipped up, slapped Stone, and sent him tumbling across the chamber. Moon caught a glancing blow from its hand and it flung him away to bounce off a pillar. He hit the floor and rolled to his feet, his head ringing. River was on the floor, struggling to stand, and Balm clung to a pillar, shaking out her wings. Jade had managed to hold on to the waterling and still tore determinedly at the creature’s neck. Oh, this is going to be a tough one, Moon thought grimly. He saw Chime, Flower, and Esom had managed to get back over to the little dome, that they were crouched down to examine the gap in the floor. Moon took a deep breath and dove for the waterling again.
He struck at its face, twisted away to avoid its teeth as it snapped at him. The thing didn’t react to pain like a living creature, and it didn’t bleed, and that was going to be a problem. River struck at its lower body and opened a gash across its stomach, and the creature barely noticed.
As Moon bounced back to a pillar and braced himself for another strike, Jade got in a rip across its throat, just above the decaying gills. That should have opened an artery, but it only released a short burst of foul-smelling fluid. It clawed at the wound and reached for Jade, forcing her to scramble back over its shoulder.