Moon stood to the side while the Viridian Sea queen and Tempest finished the greeting. He thought this colony might be fairly new; the hall was modest, with only two high-ceilinged levels, four passages opening off it, and the carvings in the walls looked fresh under the glow of the spell-lights. There were some flowering vines trained to cross the ceiling but no fountains or falls of water.
This court might be small, but it seemed healthy. The warriors and Arbora crowding the passages to get a look at the visitors had groundling forms that weren’t much different from those at Indigo Cloud and Emerald Twilight, most with bronze or copper skin and dark hair, though there was a distinctive strain of red-blonde mixed into their bloodline.
Moon just hoped they got offered a meal, since they hadn’t eaten their fill for two days. He had shifted to groundling along with the warriors, his clothes were dripping wet, and he felt grubby and tired. Bored, he scuffed his heel on the smooth wood floor, then realized the others had stopped speaking. He looked up to see the Viridian Sea warriors and Arbora staring at him expectantly. Amaranth, the queen, had her head tilted toward him in inquiry. “Your consort?” she prompted Tempest.
“No.” Tempest stiffened slightly but managed not to sound horrified at the thought. “We’re conducting him to Opal Night.”
Amaranth, who was somewhat older and larger than Tempest, flicked a spine, and the atmosphere in the hall grew distinctly colder. Moon figured that with the injured warrior having been taken care of, both queens had remembered that they were Raksura and therefore hated each other on sight. Amaranth said, “I assume he has a name.”
Tempest flicked a spine back at her. “He’s Moon, of Indigo Cloud.”
Amaranth stepped toward him and Moon twitched back, ready to bolt for the exit. But she stopped and tasted the air. “He’s been taken.” She tilted her head toward Tempest again. “Not by you.”
Tempest grimaced. “It’s a long story.”
Amaranth settled her spines and clearly made the difficult decision not to take violent offense. She said, “Then we’ll sit down, and you’ll tell it.”
Moon groaned inwardly, resigned to a long evening of tension and stares.
They were led into another hall, this one a little smaller. It was less drafty and had a large bowl hearth with warming stones. The band of carved flowers and trees just below the curve of the ceiling looked older and more finished.
As Moon looked for a place to sit, a consort dropped out of the ceiling and landed at Amaranth’s side. He was almost as tall as she was. He kept his winged form long enough to make sure the visitors had registered his size, then he shifted to groundling. In this form he didn’t show any of the telltales of age: his bronze skin and dark hair hadn’t started to gray yet. But there was a weight of gold bracelets and bands on his wrists and arms, the outward signs of Amaranth’s regard. He caught Moon’s gaze, making it clear he was speaking only to him, and said, “I’m Flint, first consort to Amaranth. Will you come to our hall?”
Streak, standing nearest to Moon, actually put a hand on his arm as if to stop him. Moon pulled away, baring his teeth in warning when Streak tried to reach for him again. Tempest hissed at Streak in barely suppressed fury, of the “you are embarrassing me” variety. Streak stepped back, confused.
Given a choice between going off with an unfamiliar consort in a strange court, or sitting here with the others and watching Tempest and Amaranth provoke each other, Moon didn’t have to think twice. He stepped around Streak and followed Flint down the nearest passage.
They had only gone up two winding turns before Flint stopped and faced Moon. The passage wasn’t empty; they were surrounded by ten or so worried Arbora. “Are they stealing you?” Flint asked bluntly.
“What?” Moon stared, taken aback. Then he realized what this must look like; consorts never traveled without queens they had either been taken by or were related to. He wished he was being stolen; then he could just kill Tempest and the others in their sleep and go home.
It was tempting for a moment to say “yes,” just to see what would happen. But Moon thought it would cause more trouble for Viridian Sea in the end than it would for Tempest. “No,” he admitted.
It must have sounded reluctant, because Flint lifted his brows skeptically. “Are you sure?”
Unable to muster any convincing sincerity, Moon just said, “It’s a long story.”
Flint accepted that with a nod. He motioned an Arbora over and instructed her to go back and let Amaranth know everything was all right, then he led Moon to the consorts’ hall.
It was comfortable, though not as large and luxurious as Indigo Cloud’s consorts’ quarters. The hall itself was small but cozy and well supplied with cushions, and there was an attached bathing room and five bowers connected to it.
Moon did have to tell the story, but the good thing was that he got to eat right away, whereas Tempest and the others would probably be expected to make polite conversation for a considerably longer time, until Amaranth got over her pique. The food was served in the consorts’ hall and Moon ate with Flint and three other consorts, one belonging to a sister queen and two untaken, the youngest looking as if he was just out of fledglinghood. There was tea, fruit, bread, and haunches of raw grasseater. While devouring freshly killed prey in the forest had its attractions, this was much more restful. Moon told them the truth, though he didn’t emphasize how long he had been alone in the east, leaving them to draw their own conclusions about when Indigo Cloud had found him.
He expected them to ask about that, but instead Flint said, hesitantly, “Your queen let you go?”
It was unexpectedly hard to answer. It took Moon a surprisingly long time to get the “yes” out. Flint and the sister queen’s consort exchanged a look; the two younger consorts stared at Moon with wide-eyed sympathy.
He had to turn away, the tightness in his throat making it suddenly hard to get a whole breath. The hostility and contempt from Tempest and her warriors had been easy to take; the concern of these people almost undid him.
Moon had been offered a spot in one of the hanging beds, but took the furs next to the hearth in the hall instead. After a while, the second youngest consort came down and joined him, easing up against his back, and placing a gentle and tentative bite on Moon’s shoulder. Moon had been among Raksura long enough to know this was an offer of sex. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t chase the other consort away, either. He liked the company but had decided never to have sex again; it was too hard on the emotions.
After a hopeful pause, the other consort nuzzled Moon’s shoulder and settled down to sleep. A little later, the youngest one, apparently feeling left out, came down and insinuated himself between Moon and the hearth, cuddling against his chest. He still smelled enough like a fledgling to make Moon’s heart twist. He didn’t think he would be able to fall asleep, but he did, and slept better than he had since leaving Indigo Cloud.
They spent three days in Viridian Sea, waiting for the mentors to judge Prize ready to fly again. Moon spent the time with the consorts, going out to fly around the outside of the colony with them, exploring the hanging gardens inside their smaller but still intricate mountain-thorn. He heard the history of their amicable split with their mother court, and how they had reclaimed this old colony, once just a hunting outpost. It turned out that they had a line-grandfather too, but he spent most of his time at their old colony, and they seldom saw him. Some Arbora came up to join them in the afternoons and evenings, to tell stories and read aloud. It made Moon reconsider his decision not to live at Opal Night, if the worse came to worst. If the consorts there were this friendly, it wouldn’t be so bad.
If worse didn’t come to worst and Jade had left when she said she would, she would be two days ahead of them by now.
The one thing he hadn’t expected to do was to miss Indigo Cloud so much. He had been leaving people all his life, to the point where all the turns seemed like an uninterrupted progression of departures, and there had bee
n people he had missed terribly. But this was a never-ending ache in his chest, and every thought of Jade, Stone, Chime, Balm, the fledglings, Heart, Bell, Merit, Rill, Bark, Bone, Blossom, the other Arbora, was an active pain. You’ll get over it, he told himself. You always get over it.
But somehow, this time was different.
Finally, on the morning of the fourth day at Viridian Sea, Moon reluctantly left the consorts to join Tempest and her warriors. Tempest acknowledged his existence with a nod and an opaque expression; the warriors looked grumpy. He suspected their accommodations hadn’t been nearly as comfortable as his. Before Moon had left the consorts’ hall, Flint had told him not to worry, that everything would surely be all right. He had said it with the unconvinced air of someone who knew it wasn’t true but had no intention of saying what he really thought, but Moon appreciated it anyway.
They set out again, flying to the west.
It rained every day, lightly enough to fly through but still making for miserable nights. As they traveled, the forest gradually changed, the mountain-trees growing further apart and the ground between becoming increasingly studded with rocky outcrops. The outcrops grew gradually taller, until they formed pillars reaching up to the height of the taller platforms of the suspended forest. The pillars were sculpted by the wind and rain into slim spirals, the rock dark gray but shot through with veins of silver that caught the light and threw back rainbow reflections.
Tempest had grudgingly admitted that she had never been this far west before, and was now navigating solely by a map that Ice had shown her. The warriors, having never seen country like this, grew uneasy. Moon, with nothing better to do and his own nerves eating away at him, took to dropping hints about various horrible Raksura-eating creatures he had encountered under similar circumstances. Some of the stories were actually true.
Everywhere they stopped, Moon searched unobtrusively for signs that Jade was ahead of them somewhere, but found none, and the rain obscured any scent that might have been left behind. They did find signs of a camp on one of the platforms where they landed to rest, but it was months old. Gust nudged the remains of the fire pit with his foot claws, asking hopefully, “We must be close? One or two more days?”
They had to be close to the edge of the Reaches. For the past day or so, the mountain-trees had been further apart and the platforms mostly bare of anything but grass. The forest floor seemed to have more rock pillars than greenery, as if the mountain-trees had been slowly encroaching on some stony expanse, and hadn’t had time yet to finish the job. “We’ve made good time,” Tempest admitted. “We might get there late tomorrow.”
Moon didn’t look for opportunities to terrorize the warriors that night; he was dreading their arrival while being so impatient for it he couldn’t think straight.
But on the next day, thunder rumbled all through the morning, threatening to slow their progress. Heavy rain started in the late afternoon.
After they had fought it for a while, Tempest landed on a branch, sheltered only by the mountain-tree’s canopy high above. She raised her voice to be heard over the rush of rain, saying, “I think we’re almost there. We can either spend time searching for shelter, or try to make the colony.”
Beacon glanced around at the warriors, gauging their stamina rather than taking their opinion. Moon, a much stronger flyer, was tired from fighting the wind, so they had to be feeling the strain. They stood with their spines drooping, dripping, and probably miserable, but none of them looked ready to drop from exhaustion. Beacon said, “I think we’d rather sleep dry tonight.”
Dart and one or two of the others nodded agreement. Tempest cocked her head at Moon. He shrugged. On his own, he would have stopped and found a place to hide and wait out the thunder, but he wasn’t going to show that weakness in front of them.
So they flew on through the rain. Moon had hoped that they could out-fly the storm, but it seemed to cover half the Reaches, pounding down as the afternoon stretched toward evening and the gray light grew more dim.
Moon was beginning to doubt the accuracy of Tempest’s ability to estimate distance. Then thunder crashed and lightning washed the sky in white. Moon flinched so hard he lost control of his wings, and the wind spun him down and sideways. Copper scales flashed in his peripheral vision, right before one of the warriors slammed into him.
Instinct took over and Moon pulled his wings up to prevent a collision that could have broken bones. He grabbed wildly, caught the flailing warrior by the collar flange and yelled, “Stop flapping, idiot!”
The warrior snapped in his wings in reflex and clung to Moon’s arms. It was Gust, dazed and frightened but sensible enough to go limp and let Moon help him.
With a couple of hard flaps Moon righted them, his head pounding from the crash of thunder that still reverberated in his bones. Shaking the rain out of his eyes, he looked for the others and saw they were flapping hard to catch the wind again, with Tempest banking back toward them. She saw Moon had Gust and motioned him toward the branches of the nearest mountain-tree.
Carrying Gust, Moon followed her in and landed on the broad branch a few paces down from the other shaken warriors. He set Gust on his feet and shouted over the dying rumble of thunder, “We have to stop!”
Tempest stepped close, taking Gust’s arm and peering into his face to make sure he was all right. Satisfied, she pointed to the south with one wing tip. The rain nearly drowning her voice, she said, “The colony is just down there!”
Startled, Moon turned to look. At the mouth of the valley, dark against the gray sky, huge stone pillars stretched up from a rocky ridge that formed a giant ring, much of it overgrown with vines and smaller trees. It enclosed a huge mountain-tree, but it was a hideously deformed one. Some past cataclysm had split the enormous structure in two, so half of the trunk leaned into the ridge, the malformed canopy reaching for the sky but at a steep angle, creating twisted branches and huge gaps. The other half of the trunk still stood, but the bare branches jutting from it showed it was long dead.
With all that to take in, it took Moon a moment to realize what else was wrong: there were no lights visible in either of the two trees. No steady white-gold glow from enspelled shells or stones or flowers, no warm glints of firelight. He said, “Are you sure they’re alive?”
He hadn’t meant it to sound facetious, but Tempest apparently took it that way. She snapped her spines at him and leapt off the branch. The warriors, caught by surprise and still recovering, followed in a belated rush. Moon took a deep breath and dove after them.
As they drew closer, Moon still saw no signs of life, though the heavy rain made it hard to make out details. The dying gray light threw the surrounding ridges of rock into deep shadow, but as they flew over the stony barrier, all the vegetation he could see was wild and untended, the same heavy green tangle of vines and moss and saplings that covered the forest floor. Inside the bowl of rock, the wind formed tricky currents and the ground was covered by a mass of giant mountain-tree roots, groves of small trees, and tumbled piles of rock. The slanting trunk of the living half of the tree still showed no hint of occupation. No lights, no movement. The platforms cradled in the branches were overgrown and slumping under the weight of wild vegetation. Moon hoped Tempest knew where she was going; the bowl was the size of a small valley and there was no sign of sentries, no indication of where the landing platform for visitors might be. It didn’t look like a place that wanted visitors.
Then Tempest spiraled down toward the lower half of the slanting trunk, and banked sideways. Following her lead, Moon saw it too: where the bulk of the bole rested against the rock, two small steady lights shone against a dark opening. There really is a court here, he thought.
They dropped down toward the platform. The tree had grown into and partially through the ridge, and the two spell-lights revealed a circular stone platform extending out from the trunk where ribs of wood had enclosed chunks of rock. The tree overhung the platform enough that it sheltered them from the wor
st of the downpour, allowing only a light drizzle to reach them.
It wasn’t until his claws touched down on the slab of stone that the shadows shifted and Moon realized the rock woven through the tree’s bark was carved stone. Gray faces, pieces of arms, shoulders, torsos poked out between the sections of glossy wood. The light on either side of the open doorway blossomed on stones carved into the shapes of lotus flowers. It was impossible to tell if the fragmented statues had been meant to represent Raksura or groundlings. Moon couldn’t see much of the ridge half-buried under the looming trunk, but now he wondered if without all the clinging greenery it would look smooth or terraced; this ancient mountain-tree might have sprouted in the middle of an even older groundling ruin.
They all shook the water off their spines and scales. A faint scrape of claws on rock brought Moon’s attention back to the trunk’s entrance. A door deep inside it had opened and let out a wash of warm light and a slim figure.
Tempest turned her head to hiss at her warriors, reminding them of their manners. They all shifted to groundling, though the wary tension in the way they stood showed none of them were happy about it. Beacon glanced at Moon and motioned impatiently at him, as if he could somehow miss the fact that he was supposed to shift too. He hissed under his breath, gritted his teeth, and let his winged form slip away, the water left on his scales transferring to his clothes.
The warrior who stepped out of Opal Night’s doorway was slim and strong, dark hair pulled back from her face, the light catching glints in her dark bronze skin. Her clothes were ordinary, a shirt belted over loose pants, the colors in faded shades of red. Her expression was studiously neutral. She said, “I am Rise, of Opal Night.”