The Cloud Roads

Chapter Three

It turned out that, despite appearances, Stone was in a hurry. The other colony he wanted to visit was to the west, which he said was on the way back to the Indigo Cloud Court. He and Moon flew down the river gorge, riding the strong wind that flowed above it, then turned to cross the mountains. They passed more ruined towers standing on the rocky cliffs like sentinels, but no inhabited settlements.

Moon suspected that Stone could have easily made twice the distance, but he seemed content to glide along at Moon’s fastest pace. Moon was just glad Stone didn’t press to go faster; he was used to spending most of the day as a groundling, and it had been more than half a turn since he had stayed in his other form so long, or flown this far at one time. By afternoon, his back ached as if he had been hauling rocks all day. At least it distracted him from thinking about the Cordans. Every thought of Ilane was like poking an open wound, but he hoped Selis was all right, that she had found a home or at least someone to live with whom she could tolerate.

As the sun set, they finally stopped to rest in a ridge where the rock formed a sheltered hollow. Heavily overhung by trees on the rise above, it looked down on the terraced steps of the forest below. Moon climbed in, shifted back to groundling, and collapsed in an exhausted heap.

Stone landed on the ledge, shifted, ducked inside, and dropped his pack. He stretched, not looking any more fatigued than he had this morning. “It’s a little chilly in here.”

Moon snorted. “A little.” The hollow was screened from the wind bending the tops of the spiny trees, but the sun had never penetrated back here, and the rock radiated cold like a block of ice. It was also small. “There’s not much room for a fire.” Not that he was eager to get up and look for a better spot.

Stone sat on his heels to rummage through his pack. “We’re not staying that long. I want to get moving again soon.”

Moon growled under his breath but didn’t argue; if Stone wanted to test him, fine. And he didn’t want to stay in these mountains any longer than they had to, either. He curled up into a huddle, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. To distract himself, and to try to get some understanding of Stone’s route, he asked, “Why didn’t you stop at the other colony on the way east?”

“Sky Copper has always been small. I knew they weren’t likely to have any spare warriors. I need to talk to them about something else.” Stone found a ratty, dark colored bundle in his pack that Moon had assumed was just cushioning for the kettle. Apparently it was a blanket. “And the mentors said the best chance was to go to Star Aster.” His expression turned preoccupied. “Or toward Star Aster. Maybe they said ‘toward.’”

Moon put that together with Stone’s earlier comment, that it took special talent to be a mentor. “The mentors are shamen?” He had often had bad luck with shamen. They were either worthless or immediately suspicious of him.

“Augurs, mostly, and healers,” Stone corrected, still preoccupied as he spread out the blanket. He lay down and shoved his pack into place as a pillow. “Come on, get some rest.” He patted the other half of the blanket, offering it to Moon.

Moon didn’t move. He still found Stone nearly impossible to read. Not that he had been able to read Ilane, either. “I’m not sleeping with you.” If this was going to be a problem, he wanted to find out now, before he spent any more long, miserable days fighting headwinds.

Stone lifted a brow, deeply amused. “I have great-grandchildren older than you.” He pointed to a white seam on his elbow. “You see this scar? That’s older than you.”

Moon’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, but he wondered if that was true. He hadn’t been keeping close track, but he knew roughly that it had been around thirty-five turns of the seasonal cycle since his family had been killed. That made him old for some groundling races and young for others. If Stone was really that old, and Moon was really the same species...If this doesn’t work out, you’re going to be spending a lot of time alone.

He edged over and eased down next to Stone. The blanket looked shabby but it was thick and well made; it didn’t soften the rock but it kept the cold at bay. Rolling on his side, facing away from Moon, Stone said, “I’ll try not to molest you in my sleep.”

“Bastard,” Moon muttered. He would have retreated to the other end of the cleft in a huff, but Stone seemed to put out almost as much body heat as a groundling as he did in his other form. Still annoyed, Moon fell asleep.

It was deep into the night and Moon was curled against Stone’s back, when Stone thumped him with an elbow and said it was time to go.

The mountains stretched on and on, but even when the clouds gathered and they flew through cold mist that was like breathing wet wool, there was no question of getting lost. Moon had always known which way due south was, could feel it as if it pulled at his bones. From the way Stone confidently soared through the thick clouds, never veering from their course, Moon thought he must have a similar ability.

For the next few days, they flew by day and by night, stopping only briefly to sleep and hunt the sparse game. Moon had seen several different breeds of mountain grasseaters but they were all boney and lean, and didn’t make for satisfying meals. Though the long flights were exhausting, Moon quickly gained stamina. But the part of the day he looked forward to the most was before they slept, when Stone asked him questions about where he had lived, how far he had traveled, what he had seen. With more tact than Moon would have given him credit for, he didn’t mention the Cordans.

It was strange to talk about the places Moon had been without having to carefully avoid anything that had to do with flying or shifting. In return, Stone talked about flying over the sea realms, seeing the shapes of white coral towers just below the waves, the flickering tails of merrow-people and waterlings as they fled his shadow. It was dangerous to go out over the seas, with nowhere to land if you ran into a storm or grew too tired to go on; it was even more risky to swim in the deeps, where creatures far larger than the biggest land predators lived. Moon had never ventured much past the coastal islands to the south, and found it fascinating to hear what lay further out.

By twilight on the fifth day, they came to the fringes of the mountains, where the sharp peaks tumbled gradually down into green hills and rocky outcrops were cut through with narrow, rushing streams. This time Stone picked out a grassy ledge wide enough for a fire, though it was warmer down here than on the upper slopes. Moon suspected he just wanted to make tea. When Moon brought back a bundle of deadfall collected from the brush in the ravines, he found Stone shifted to groundling, with a big, woolly grasseater carcass steaming in the cool air and a rock hearth already built.

After they ate, Moon stretched out on his stomach, basking in the warm firelight, the cool turf soft against his groundling skin, comfortably full of grasseater and tea. From somewhere distant, he heard a roar, edged like a bell and so far away it almost blended with the wind. He slanted a look at Stone to see if they had to worry.

“Skylings, mountain wind-walkers.” Stone sat by the fire, breaking sticks up into small pieces and absently tossing them into the flames. “They live too far up in the air to notice us.”

Moon rolled onto his side to squint suspiciously up at the sky. The stars were bright, streaked with clouds. “Then what do they eat?”

“Other skylings, tiny ones, no bigger than gnats. They make swarms big enough to mistake for clouds.” As Moon tried to picture that, Stone asked, “Did you ever look for other shifters?”

Stone hadn’t asked about this before, and Moon wanted to avoid the subject. Looking for his own people had led him into more trouble than anything else. “For awhile. Then I stopped.” He shrugged, as if it was nothing. “I couldn’t search the whole Three Worlds.”

“And the warrior you were with didn’t tell you which court, or the name of the queen, or anyone in your line?” Stone sounded distinctly irritated. “She didn’t even give you a hint?”

Moon corrected him pointedly, “No, my mother didn’t tell me anything.”

Stone sighed, poking at the fire. Moon got ready for an argument, but instead Stone asked, “How did she and the Arbora die?”

That wasn’t a welcome subject either. It was like an old wound that had never quite stopped bleeding. Moon didn’t want to talk about the details, but he owed Stone some kind of an answer. He propped his chin on his arms and looked out into the dark. “Tath killed them.”

Tath were reptilian groundlings, predators, and they had surrounded the tree Moon’s family had been sleeping in. He remembered waking, confused and terrified, as his mother tossed him out of the nest. He had realized later that she had picked him because he was the only other one who could fly, the only one who had a chance to escape while she stayed to defend the others.

He had been too young to fly well, and had crashed down through the branches, tumbling nearly to the ground, within reach of the Tath waiting below. One had snatched at him and Moon had clawed its eyes, struggling away. He had half-flown, half-climbed through the trees back up to the nest. But his mother and the others were all dead, torn to pieces.

If he had realized how hard living without them would be, he would have let the Tath catch him. He just said, “It happened... fast.”

They were both silent for a time, listening to the fire crackle. Moon had the feeling that Stone was as uncomfortable offering sympathy as Moon was reluctant to accept it. He wasn’t surprised when Stone tossed a last stick into the fire, dusted his hands, and veered off the subject completely. “Do you know why it’s called the Three Worlds?”

Moon relaxed again, settling down into the turf, relieved to be on safer ground. “Three continents.” It was a wild guess. Moon had never seen a map big enough to show more than the immediate area.

“Three realms: sea, earth, and sky. Everyone remembers the sea realms, but they’ve forgotten the sky realms. It’s been so many generations since the island peoples fought among themselves. They’re mostly gone now, with no one left to tell the stories.”

Moon wondered if he had been right about the sky-islands all along. “Is that where we’re from?”

His gaze distant, Stone said, “No. We’ve always come from the earth.”

At dawn they flew out across the grassland, where old pillars stuck up out of the ground, part of an ancient scattered roadway or aqueduct. So many peoples had come and gone from the Three Worlds that it was littered with their remnants.

By afternoon they found an intact road, cutting through the ocean of tall green grass, more than a hundred paces wide and built of the same white stone as the broken pillars. As the day darkened toward evening, they spotted a groundling caravan traveling upon it.

The caravan included box wagons, heavily carved of dark wood, pulled by large, shaggy draughtbeasts with substantial horns. It had stopped and was preparing to camp for the night, with the groundlings unharnessing the beasts, putting up tents, building cook fires.

Moon and Stone flew high enough that the groundlings hadn’t noticed them. They both blended in with the twilight sky, but Moon banked to give the camp wide berth anyway. He doubted the caravan had weapons that could do any damage at this distance, but there was no point in frightening them. Then he saw Stone circling down, heading for a landing in the tall grass some distance from the edge of the road. Is he out of his mind? he thought, startled.

Stone dropped into a low spot at an angle to the road, so swift and silent the groundlings probably hadn’t seen him.

Moon went down as fast as he could, alighting in the flattened grass that marked Stone’s landing site. Stone had already shifted to groundling and stretched extravagantly, rolling his shoulders. The grass around them was as tall as a small tree, standing well above their heads. Moon shifted, demanding, “What are you doing?”

Stone gave him a pointed look, as if the answer was obvious. “I want the news. They’re Sericans, probably coming from Kish.”

“What, you’re just going to walk up to them?” Moon had trouble believing he was serious.

Stone lifted a brow. “I could stand on the roadside and try to signal, but—”

Moon shook his head incredulously. “They’re going to know what we are. How many groundlings do you see wandering around out here?”

“Maybe fifty or sixty, judging by the wagons.” Stone shouldered his pack and explained patiently, “These people travel long distances, and they see a lot of strange things. Some of them will suspect we’re different. As long as they don’t feel threatened, they won’t act on it.”

It still sounded crazy. Moon had approached groundlings like this before, but only after making certain he didn’t look like anything but another traveler, even if it meant landing a day’s walk or more away. “What if you’re wrong?”

Stone started away through the grass. “I’ve been wrong before,” he admitted, not helpfully.

Moon reluctantly trailed him to the edge of the road. It was built up more than ten paces high, more of a causeway through the grassland, something that hadn’t been apparent from the air. Crumbling sets of steps had been built at intervals, half-buried in the grass; whatever they led to was long vanished. Stone climbed the nearest and started across toward the camp. Still expecting disaster, Moon crouched uneasily at the edge of the road.

The wagons were arranged in a half-circle, and the camp smelled of wood smoke, incense, and onion roots frying in nut oil. The groundlings had blue skin, a much darker blue than Kavath’s, and their hair was black. They wore bright colors, long coats and pantaloons of red or blue or dark green, embroidered and trimmed with gold or black braid. They had spears, and short bows that looked as if they were made of horn. The furry draughtbeasts shook their hides and lowed as Stone approached.

Several men came out to greet him, warily at first, but they seemed to grow easier as he spoke to them. The wind carried their voices away but Moon could hear fragments. The head drover, speaking Altanic, asked if they were from Kaupi or Loros, and Stone replied only that they were travelers, heading west. Finally they took Stone into the camp to sit by the fire with an older man who was probably their leader. Moon saw the man’s sharp eyes glance his way, and heard him say, “The young one is skittish?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Stone answered.

Moon noticed he didn’t accept the caravaners’ offers of food and drink. In turn, the caravaners refused Stone’s offer of a pressed tea cake from his pack. Moon watched the old man watch Stone. He knows, and the thought made Moon’s nerves itch. Only two of them out here, Moon without even a bag to carry food, fighting their way through the grass rather than walking on the road. The groundling knew he was sitting there at his fire with something strange, not just a man from a different race. But he seemed to be intrigued rather than frightened. How Stone could do this, Moon didn’t understand.

He hasn’t been alone forever, hasn’t been hunted, Moon thought. Maybe the caravaners felt it, and it made them unafraid. Of course, Stone could shift in an eye blink, and those arrows would do little damage to his hide.

Maybe Moon had just been doing it wrong all this time. Living in the wrong part of the Three Worlds, approaching groundlings in the wrong way, living a deception he couldn’t maintain. After a time, people sensed he was lying, and assumed he meant them harm. I don’t know. He sighed and rubbed his gritty eyes and wished Stone would hurry.

The women came over to sit by the fire and join the conversation. They wore the same clothes as the men, their breasts bare under the open coats, their hair worn straight and unbound to the waist. After a time, some of the younger girls even ventured to the edge of the camp, trying to coax Moon over. He sidled away along the wall when they came closer than twenty paces. Someone called them back and they retreated, giggling, the bells sewn into their clothes chiming as they ran.

Stone left them not long after night fell, coming back to the wall where Moon waited. “Was there news?” Moon asked, sounding deliberately skeptical. He unfolded his legs and jumped down off the road.

Stone took the steps. “There are rumors of Fell along the inland sea. They haven’t seen any, but they know caravaners and shipmasters who won’t go any further east than Demi now.” He sounded thoughtful. “For a couple of generations it seemed like they were dying out up this way. But now they’re moving around again, more active than they’ve been for twenty turns.”

Moon had never heard of Demi, which just told him how well and truly lost he was. He shrugged uncomfortably. “There’s Fell everywhere,” he said, as they walked away into the grass.

A few days later, Moon broke down and asked why Stone thought his mother had stolen him.

They sat on top of a broken pillar at least a hundred paces high and wider than one of the Sericans’ big wagons, listening to the wind rustle the tall grass. It was a comfortable perch for the night; dirt and grass had collected on the rough surface, making a soft carpet to sleep on. Moon could see hills in the distance, dark outlines against the star-filled sky; Stone had said Sky Copper lay among them and that they would reach it in another day or so.

Stone said slowly, “There’s what’s called a royal clutch. Five female Aeriat, born at the same time. As they grow into fledglings, one or two or three turn into queens and the rest become warriors. Sometimes the ones that turn out to be warriors... don’t get over the disappointment. It makes them do crazy things, sometimes. Like leave their court, steal clutches, or... other things.” He stirred a little uncomfortably, admitting, “It might have been something else. Sometimes colonies fail, and there were never many Raksura that far east where you were living. She could have been a survivor, trying to find somewhere to go.”

Moon thought it over, looking off across the plain. Insects sang in the dark, and the day’s heat still hung in the air. Further away, he could hear movement in the grass, low growls, carrion hunters coming for the carcass of the big furry grasseater they had eaten earlier. He had noticed that the big predators kept their distance; he thought there was something about Stone, even in groundling form, that warned them off.

Moon tried to remember if there had been any hint that his mother was running from something, or to something. It was long ago, and as a boy he hadn’t paid much attention to anything but playing and learning to fly and hunt. But he knew she hadn’t been crazy. And talking about it any more was pointless. “What makes queens so different?”

Stone stretched out on the grass and folded his hands on his chest, seeming content with the change of subject. “They have a color pattern to their scales, and their spines are longer. When they shift, they lose their wings, but they look more like Arbora than groundlings. They keep their claws, tails, some of their spines.”

That was a strange thought, not being able to shift all the way to groundling. But it didn’t sound like queens could do much more than female warriors, except make more queens. “So what makes them special?” he asked, just to provoke Stone.

“Queens hold the court together. And they have a power that mentors don’t,” Stone explained patiently. “If you’re close enough to her, a queen can keep you from shifting.”

Is he serious? Moon thought, appalled. He stirred uneasily, scratching at the gnat bites on his thigh, trying to conceal his reaction. “Even you?”

Stone lifted his brows. “Even me.”

He was serious. “Are there a lot of them?”

Stone frowned, as if this question was somehow loaded with meaning. “In Indigo Cloud, just the two. The reigning queen and the young one. There should be more, at least a clutch of sister queens to support the reigning queen. But we’ve had bad luck.”

Two. That didn’t sound so bad. Moon should be able to avoid them. If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t stay at the colony. But he was getting used to being with Stone, flying with him, hunting as a team, talking without having to conceal anything. Used enough to it that he would miss it when it was gone.

Stone was watching him again, his gaze opaque, and not just because of his bad eye. Moon wondered if his own thoughts had shown on his face. But Stone just asked, “What was her name, the warrior who said she was your mother?”

Moon hesitated. He didn’t see a reason not to tell. “Sorrow.”

Stone sighed in that particular tone Moon was beginning to recognize. “What?” Moon demanded.

“Nothing,” Stone told him with a shrug. “I just wouldn’t give one of my kids a name like that. It’s asking for trouble.”

“You really have kids.” He was a little surprised. Stone had made that crack about great-grandchildren earlier, but Moon had thought he was making it up.

“Quite a few, over the turns.” Stone fixed his gaze on the sky, narrowing his eyes. “I’m bringing my great-great-granddaughter a present.”

He must mean the gold bracelet in his pack. Moon had assumed he had brought it along to trade in case he needed something from a groundling settlement, but this made more sense. Moon started to ask another question, but noticed Stone’s eyes were closed.

Frustrated, Moon stretched out in the grass and looked up at the night, crowded with stars. At least seeing the Sky Copper Court would give him some idea of what to expect at Indigo Cloud, though Stone had said it was smaller. You won’t know what it’s like until you get there. Worrying about it won’t help. Telling himself that didn’t help either.

It was late the next afternoon when they reached the end of the plain, where big rolling hills were covered with scrubby brush and short wind-twisted trees turned red and gold by the sunset. Their shadows startled herds of large, horned grasseaters with brown fur. When Stone stopped abruptly, flaring his wings out, Moon overshot him.

By the time he banked and returned, Stone had landed on the rocky crest of a hill. Moon landed beside him, breathing hard. It had been a long flight, and the wind hadn’t been with them until they reached the hills. “What is it?”

Stone shifted to groundling. He never spoke in his other form. Moon wasn’t certain he could. Stone stared into the distance, eyes narrowed, and said, “Something’s wrong. Their sentries should have come out to meet us.”

Moon turned to squint into the sunset, trying to spot which distant, rounded hill was the colony. “What does—” The rush of air sent him staggering as Stone shifted and surged into flight.

Swearing, Moon leapt after him.

Moon didn’t see the colony until he was almost on top of it. The sun sank in the distance, shadows pooling at the hills’ feet. The mound was buried among the other hills, but the shape gave it away. It was too even, and the trees formed a series of terraced rings all the way to the top. Closer, and he could see openings carved out of the rock and dirt. What he couldn’t see was any movement, except for a lazy circle of dark green carrion birds that fled as they drew near.

Moon followed as Stone circled the mound. Glowing in the golden light of the sunset, the back side was a collapsed jumble of rock and dirt and uprooted trees. No smoke drifted up from it, but he could smell charred wood and flesh.

Stone landed on a terrace below the collapse, folded his wings back, and just stood there. Moon landed a moment later. The sun baked off the rock and bare dirt; the sweet smell of the white blossoms on the gnarled trees couldn’t disguise the stench of death. Moon paced carefully along the edge, digging his claws into the loose dirt, shaking his head in disbelief. He had expected a hundred different things, but he hadn’t expected this.

Big broken logs were jammed into the dirt in all different directions. Moon stopped at one, retracting his claws to run his hand over the smooth polished surface. The wood must have been brought from the mountain forests to build the framework that supported the mound. Had supported it. He couldn’t see any corpses buried in the dirt, but the stink of decay and the hum of flies told him they were here somewhere.

It obviously wasn’t a natural collapse: the uprooted trees and most of the dirt had slid down the outside of the mound. Something dug through from out here, Moon thought uneasily. Possibly several somethings, all Stone’s size, or larger. He knew what that meant.

Stone turned and walked along the terrace past Moon, toward the nearest intact opening. Distracted, Moon moved to follow.

The slap from Stone’s tail caught him in the shoulder and knocked him down the side of the mound. He tumbled over rocks and slammed painfully into a tree. Dizzy, he looked up in time to see Stone tuck his wings back and slip into the opening.

Damn it, ow. Moon extracted himself from the broken branches of the tree, shook the dirt off, and jumped into the air.

He glided down to the next hill and landed on a big flat rock at the summit. His claws scored the sandy surface, and he saw the whole top of the rock was covered with similar marks; the inhabitants of the colony must have used it as a frequent perch. He tried to imagine this place as it must have been only a short time ago, with dozens of people like him flying in and out of the mound, landing on this rock to watch the sunset. Not anymore.

Weary to the bone, he shifted to groundling. He sat down with a groan and wrapped his arms around his knees, trying to ease the dull ache in his back and shoulders. Well, that’s that, he thought sourly.

Stone’s rebuff hadn’t been necessary; he didn’t need to see whatever carnage lay inside the mound to know this had been done by Fell. There were predators big enough to make that hole in the hillside, but they were just animals, and he was certain a group of shifters could have driven one off or killed it.

Moon had suspected the Fell were a factor ever since Stone had said he was looking for more warriors to protect his colony. But suspecting it was one thing; now he was certain.

The rock was still warm from the day’s heat and the wind was strong and cool. Far to the west a small storm was gathering, boiling clouds dyed purple by the growing twilight, something else to worry about. Part of Moon wanted to hunt and look for a spring so Stone wouldn’t have to do it when he came out, to pretend that nothing had changed so they could go on as they had before, at least until they reached Indigo Cloud. He couldn’t believe part of him was that stupid.

He should get out of here before Stone came for him, if he came for him. It would be days and days of travel before he could get back to more familiar territory. Once there, he had no idea. But there were plenty of groundling cities he hadn’t been hounded out of yet.

Then the wind changed, and Moon froze.

The Fell were still here.

He pushed to his feet, tasting the air. No, it wasn’t his imagination. He snarled under his breath. This day just keeps getting worse.

Moon shifted and jumped off the rock, snapping his wings out to catch the wind.

He circled the mound, studying it more closely. There were more entrances like the one that Stone had vanished through. He landed at one near the top of the mound, across from the collapsed area.The passage slanted down at a near vertical angle, lined with rock. Not far below the edge, a tangle of rope was secured to the side by metal pegs, hanging down until it vanished into the darkness below—a rope ladder, meant for the Arbora, the Raksura who had no wings.

Moon crouched low, tasting the cool air flowing up from deep inside the mound. It carried Stone’s now familiar scent, mingled with death and rot and charred wood, all blended with the stench of Fell. Live Fell, not corpses from the battle that must have raged inside. Moon felt his whole body tighten, felt a growl gather in his chest.

He folded his wings back and slid into the passage to catch the ropes and climbed rapidly down.

The rope was made of something like braided hair or silk, not plant fiber. Whatever it was, it was tough enough to resist his claws. Faint light glowed ahead, just enough to change the shade of the darkness and show that the passage opened into a larger chamber. Through his grip on the rope, Moon felt the rock and dirt tremble, as if somewhere deep in the mound, something heavy slammed into the supporting walls. Idiot, Moon snarled, not sure if he meant himself or Stone or both.

He swung out of the passage, hanging onto the tangle of rope. There was just enough light to make out glimpses of the heavy carved logs braced against the curving walls, supporting a structure of delicate wooden balconies, bridges, galleries, many with tents of some slick material pitched atop them, the colors leached away by the dark. Some galleries were collapsed or hanging drunkenly, with the rope netting that connected them in confused tangles. Wan, yellow illumination came from hanging baskets, too small and faint to provide much light. Moon had seen magic used for light before, objects like bones or wood spelled to glow, though it usually didn’t last long, and these must be fading.

He heard rustling, something moving. The sound came from an intact balcony occupied by a half-collapsed tent. Moon spread his wings, half-leaping, half-gliding down to the balcony. He landed amid a mess of broken crockery, uprooted plants, scattered cushions. The tent fabric fluttered as something moved inside. A flap flew up and a Fell leapt out.

It was only a small one, a little shorter than Moon, a minor dakti. It did look somewhat like Moon; he had always understood how terrified groundlings might be confused. But instead of scales it had thicker armored plates on its back and shoulders, and its face was distorted, with a long, animal jaw and a double row of fangs. Its less flexible wings were webbed and leathery, with fewer joints. It had a severed arm clutched in its teeth, a dark limb that made Moon think groundling before he saw the claws on the rigid hand.

The dakti stared at him in blank astonishment, the red-rimmed dark-adapted eyes going wide. Moon grinned and lunged.

It turned to jump off the platform and spat the arm out so it could shriek a warning to the others. Moon was on it before it managed either, landing on its back and slamming it to the wooden floor. It grabbed at his arm, its claws ripping at his scales before he wrenched its head around, snapping its neck. Moon bounced to his feet, listening, but he didn’t hear any more movement nearby.

There were three main breeds of Fell, dakti, kethel, and rulers. The rulers were the only ones with the brains to plan a trap; all the others did was follow orders. There had better not be a ruler here, Moon thought, still grimly angry. He stepped to the edge of the balcony and left the minor dakti twitching in its death throes. Or we’re already dead.

He leapt off the balcony and down to a bridge, then down again to a curtain of netting, swinging along it to another passage in the floor.

This tunnel was wider, and halfway through it the massive thumping grew louder, shaking the walls, knocking dirt loose from every crack and cranny. Somewhere below, someone growled, a voice he didn’t recognize.

Moon dropped out of the passage into a chamber mostly lost in shadow, only a few of the baskets still lit. The stink of charred flesh and wood was suffocating, but it didn’t disguise the Fell taint. Moon sensed bodies moving in the dark, frantic motion. He caught the netting with his feet and hung upside down, letting his eyes adjust, trying to pinpoint the movement by sound.

Midway down, a complex grid of log bridges and platforms was strung with rope ladders and trailing fabric. Far below it, in the bottom of the chamber, massive bodies struggled. After a moment he caught the reflected glints off scales, and recognized the pointed spade-shape on the end of Stone’s tail whipping up to smash into the wall. Stone was fighting a Fell nearly as big as he was, a major kethel, but Moon had expected that. He couldn’t see what the other Fell were doing.

At least half a dozen minor dakti, Moon’s size or a little bigger, clustered on two of the supporting logs. It looked like they were working at the join, gnawing and tearing with teeth and claws at the thick ropes that still held it together. The structure was already precarious, broken in enough places to hang drunkenly over... over the bottom well of the chamber, where Stone was occupied by the fight with the big kethel. Good idea, Moon thought.

He meant to just hang here and wait for the right moment, but one of the dakti must have seen him; its warning-shriek hurt his ears. Moon grimaced, annoyed. He didn’t want them to stop what they were doing to come up here after him. Fine. We’ll do it the hard way, he thought, and dropped for the platform.

He struck one dakti square on the head, knocking it flat, and used it as a springboard to leap on the one that swung to face him. Moon landed on it, bowling it over backwards. It tried to sink its claws into his shoulders and Moon flared his spines to keep it off. He grabbed its wrists, using his feet to rip from its chest down, disemboweling it. He threw the body at the next dakti waiting to leap on him, knocking it off the platform. He rolled to his feet, then staggered as the surface under him jerked. The other three dakti had kept to their job, tearing at the ropes holding the logs in place. The join was giving way. At the top of his lungs, Moon yelled, “Stone, get out of there!”

The dakti spun to face him, snarling, but the logs shifted, creaking and groaning as the whole structure started to lean. Moon braced to leap, then a sudden whish of air warned him. He flung himself forward, but something hit him from behind, the jolt knocking him flat on the platform.

Moon rolled over to see a major kethel loom over him, glaring down, its breath stinking of old blood and overripe corpses. It looked like the minor dakti but was as big as Stone, and an array of horns stood out around its head. A heavy collar around its neck was hung with groundling skulls. Deep ragged claw marks across its face dripped black ichor. Uh oh, Moon had time to think frantically, digging his claws in to scramble away from it. This wasn’t exactly working out the way he had planned.

Then Stone shot up behind the kethel and landed on its back, claws digging into the joints in its armor to yank it backward. Moon leapt up as the platform gave way under their weight, logs flipped upward, and the whole structure collapsed.

Moon jumped off, snapped out his wings, and beat hard to get high enough to reach another dangling rope net. Clinging to it, he looked back to see the kethel going down under the heavy logs. Stone perched on the wall, sweeping his tail around to knock more logs and debris down after it.

The kethel shrieked one last time, its body twisting in death throes. Moon breathed out in relief and started to climb.

Then from below, he heard a voice, raspy and thick, but still loud enough to carry. “Stone, absent elder of Indigo Cloud!”

His claws hooked in the net, Moon looked back. A dakti was trapped in the broken remnant of the platform, crushed between two logs. Its mouth was open, the voice echoing out from the distended throat. It said, “Is that your get? We thought you too feeble now to breed.”

It was the voice of a Fell ruler, speaking in the Raksuran language through the dying dakti. It knows we’re here. It knows Stone’s name, Moon thought, a chill running through his blood. It’s seen me.

Stone made a noise, a reverberating growl that was more weary annoyance than anger. He reached up and closed his fist around the dakti, crushing it.

Moon twitched to settle his spines, and started to climb again. The instant of panic was gone, and he told himself to be rational. The groundlings said that what one ruler knew, they all knew, but that couldn’t be entirely true. There were different flights of Fell, and they fought each other for territory; surely they wouldn’t share knowledge. And yes, a ruler might have seen him through a dakti, but it had been more interested in Stone. It would think Moon was just another Raksura.

On his way back up through the mound he found a wounded dakti taking the same route, caught it, and tore its throat out. At least it didn’t try to talk to him.

He climbed out of the top passage into fresh, cool air and twilight, the stars coming out in a sky turning from blue to deep purple. Moon flew back to the rocky perch on the next hill. He was covered with dust and Fell blood, scratched and sore.

The sudden whoosh startled him. Moon hissed and scrambled away, tumbling down the hill. He landed in a clumsy crouch, but when he looked back, Stone was standing on the rock in groundling form. Stone said, “Come here.”

Moon hesitated, all too aware that if he wanted to run, he should have done it before now. He couldn’t outfly Stone without a good head start, even when he wasn’t already exhausted from a long day’s flight. The worse part was that he didn’t want to run.

Tense and reluctant, he climbed back up to the rock. He shifted to groundling, facing Stone.

“Sorry,” Stone said, which wasn’t what Moon was expecting. “You all right?”

He reached out to brush the dirt off Moon’s forehead.

Moon shied away, startled and self-conscious. “Yes.”

Stone watched him for a moment, then let his breath out. “Will you still come with me to Indigo Cloud?”

Moon hesitated. He had always thought that he was flying into a fight; not talking about it had just let him ignore it until they got there. And he was going to have to deal with the Fell sometime. “You think the Fell are already there.”

“Yes, they could be there now. They know we’re weak, ready to be hit. I don’t know how much time we’ve got.” Stone winced, as if it hurt to admit it. “It’ll take three days at the speed we’ve been traveling. I can make it in one.”

Moon nodded. That would give him more time to think, at least. “Show me which way to go and I’ll follow—”

“Or I could take you with me. Now.”

Moon eyed him. After Stone’s rescue, he knew what being carried was like. He would have to be in his other form most of the time to stand the cold and the wind, and he had already spent more than a day that way. It was one thing to keep flying on the edge of exhaustion when you knew you could land and collapse when you couldn’t take it anymore; it was another to know he wouldn’t have any control. He said, warily, “I don’t understand why I can’t just follow you.”

“Because I need to get there in a hurry,” Stone said, every word pointed, “and I need you with me. Look, you either trust me or you don’t—”

“I don’t,” Moon said, frustrated.

“You’re such a cynical bastard. You’re going to fit right in at home.” Stone lifted his brows. “Well?”

“Why do you need me with you?”

“I don’t want you changing your mind along the way.” Stone shook his head, exasperated. “I haven’t given you a lot of reasons why coming to Indigo Cloud is a good thing for you. That’s because I’ve been gone for half a season, most of which I wasted talking while those worthless asses in Star Aster strung me along. I don’t know what I’m going to find when I get back. I don’t know what I’ll be up against. And I’m not going to make empty promises.”

Moon set his jaw to keep from growling. The sun was dying into the distance, only the bare rim still visible above the hills, and the glow on the black wound in the side of the mound was fading. “All right, I’ll go.”

For once, he could tell Stone was relieved. “Good.”

Moon looked away, uncomfortable. “But we need food and water first. The damn Fell aren’t any good to eat.” Stone lifted a brow. Moon added belatedly, “Not that I ever tried.”