The Cloud Roads

Chapter Eighteen

The two kethel flew at their best speed, their shapes etched against the night sky, so fast only Stone could have caught up with them. Flying full out, Moon could just keep them in sight.

He looked back to see the warriors already dropping back. No matter how hard they flew, the younger and smaller fell the farthest behind. This isn’t going to work, Moon thought desperately. He slowed to fly level with Jade, circling her to shout, “You stay with them. I’ll follow the kethel!”

Jade circled with him, looking back at the warriors, grimacing in despair. The Aeriat were strung out in a long line, with only Vine and River coming close to keeping up. “Are you sure? If they stop—”

“This could be what they want. If you don’t stay in a group, they could send dakti back to swarm the stragglers.” The danger would just increase as the night wore on.

Jade growled in reluctant agreement. “Leave us markers so we won’t lose your trail.”

“Wait, wait!” That was Chime, flying full out to catch up with them. He slowed into a circle, panting, and said, “Here, take this, just in case you can use it.”

It was one of the waterskins of poison. Chime held it out and Moon caught it, slinging it over his shoulder.

“Be careful!” Jade called. As she and Chime banked to turn back, Moon flew ahead to catch up with the kethel.

All too soon he lost sight of the others, and it was just him and the kethel, alone under the vault of stars. The kethel slowed their pace a little, and Moon hung back as far as he dared, both to conserve his strength and to stay at the far end of their range of vision. He hoped that if they looked back, he would just blend in to the night sky.

They headed mostly northwest, with no abrupt changes of direction. Moon stopped briefly at likely outcrops to pile up stones pointing the way. He hoped that was what Jade had meant when she said to leave markers; he had no idea what other kind of markers to leave. Whenever he landed, he noticed how awkwardly heavy the waterskin of poison was, and he didn’t think he would be able to use it. If the rulers killed at the colony hadn’t managed to pass on a warning about poisoned water, then the kethel certainly would. But he might find something to do with it. It was too valuable a weapon to just abandon.

As dawn broke, the forested valleys came to an abrupt halt, giving way to a flat plain of yellow grass crossed by shallow streams and dotted with trees. There’s no cover, Moon thought, cursing the Fell. None. A baby treeling couldn’t hide in that. They had probably chosen this path deliberately, knowing that any pursuers would be completely exposed.

The grass was sparse, barely knee-high. Trees as slender as rods stood as much as two hundred paces high. Their canopies fanned out like round sunshades, the light green leaves providing little barrier to the eyes of anything flying over. The rocky streams were nearly flat too, barely a few fingers deep, the water glittering in the sunlight. It would be a perfect hunting ground for the major kethel.

Moon landed long enough to make another arrow out of rocks, pointing the way across the plain.

By late evening, the stench of Fell was heavy on the wind, and Moon thought the kethel must be close to their destination. The streams winding through the plain had coalesced into a broad river running toward a series of ridges and the foot of a distant escarpment. Moon spotted some hopping grasseaters near the river and made a snap decision to take one. He had no idea how much longer the kethel meant to fly, and he couldn’t keep up this pace on an empty stomach.

He stooped on a hopper before the herd knew he was there, killed it, and ate nearly fast enough to make himself sick. Then he flew to the river to drink and quickly wash the blood off. There, he discovered the banks were dark with what looked like metal-mud. Hah, finally, a little luck. Moon scraped his claws through the mud to make certain, then dropped and rolled in it, wincing at the metallic odor, extending his wings to thoroughly coat his whole body.

Once it dried on his scales, the odor would disguise his natural scent. The fact that it also burned easily was worrisome, though he would have to pass close to a flame for the dried mud to catch. Though he suspected that once he found the kethel’s destination, accidentally burning to death would be the least of his worries.

He quickly made two more rock arrows, one pointing in the direction the kethel had taken and the other toward his mud-wallow; he hoped the others found it and got the idea.

He took flight and, after a burst of speed, came within sight of the kethel again. He settled in for a long steady haul.

The sun set, and the kethel continued more than halfway through the night until they reached the rocky outline of the escarpment. Moon had been flying so long by that point that he stared in shock when the kethel suddenly banked and circled for a landing.

Moon dropped toward the ground, seeking cover in the rocky hills on this side of the river. He landed amid boulders and old rock falls covering a steep hillside, under the partial cover of tall spreading trees, and crept up to the top to try to see where the kethel had gone.

Moon’s namesake had waned to nothing and the only light came from the stars. It was too dark to make out much but the vague shape of the escarpment. That whole side of the cliff was in deep shadow. But the kethel had settled somewhere over there, and the stench of Fell was intense. This had to be more than just a rest stop. Watching intently, Moon caught flickers of movement and thought it must be dakti, flying above the cliffs. The kethel met up with another flight, or the rest of their own flight. He hesitated, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t fly over there blind. He hissed in frustration, and dumped the heavy waterskin of poison off his shoulder.

Moon shifted to groundling form to conserve his strength; the dried metal-mud settled on his skin and clothes, gritty and itching. Then he tucked himself into a hollow in the rock, and waited, watching and dozing off and on.

Finally the sky lightened with the leading edge of dawn, and the shadows gradually turned from dark to gray, revealing the valley and the cliff face.

The river curved there, gleaming silver in its sandy bed. At the base of the cliff was the ruin of a groundling city. A great city, with two vast levels of pillared porticos that flanked arched gateways, leading back into the rock. Above, the cliff face, hundreds of paces high, swelled out like a ball.

No, I’m looking at it wrong, Moon thought, as the light grew brighter. That’s not part of the cliff. It was two cities, not one. A groundling ruin with a giant Dwei hive built on top of it.

Squinting, he could see the difference between the golden stone of the cliffs and the gold-tinged dust covering the rough material of the hive. The groundling city had been built at the entrance to a gorge. The groundlings must have carved out the gorge for more room, perhaps bent the flow of the river away from it, and used the rock to build their city. Turns and turns later, with the groundlings gone and the city fallen to ruin, the Dwei had constructed their hive, using the sides of the gorge to brace the enormous structure, and sitting it firmly atop the ruined city, filling the gorge from one side to the other.

The Dwei were skylings, something like insects, something like lizards. Moon didn’t know much about them except that they didn’t seem to prey on groundlings or other races. They made their hives with a substance that looked like clay, secreted out of their bodies somehow. He didn’t think they would voluntarily share their hive with Fell, or anything else. The Fell must have kept the hive and ate the Dwei.

Dakti circled above the top of the hive, and one dropped down to vanish somewhere inside it. There had to be an entrance up there; that had to be where the kethel had gone. Trying to follow them would be instant suicide.

Moon had never been inside a Dwei hive before, but he had seen drawings. The inside of the hive should be hollow, with plenty of room for the kethel to fly and climb around in their shifted forms. But the gates and doorways he could see in the groundling city’s long portico looked like they were meant for normal, Moon-sized groundlings. If the hallways and corridors further inside were comparable, the kethel wouldn’t be able to fit down there unless they shifted to groundling. The ruin didn’t have to be attached to the hive, but it might be, and if he could find the way in before Jade and the others arrived, it would save time and argument.

He needed to see how far into the gorge the city extended. If there was a way in through the back somewhere, it would be easier to avoid the circling dakti sentries. And if he got killed in the attempt, he needed to leave some sort of message for the others.

His markers and the scent of the metal-mud would point the way here. This was a good, concealed vantage point, and it was unlikely that the dakti would stumble on it; they didn’t seem to be scouting any distance from the hive. Of course, they wanted us to follow them, and they’re hoping we’ll attack like crazy idiots, he thought sourly, picking out a good flat rock face. The only thing they could do was attack like sane idiots, and hope that worked.

He scratched out a brief message in Altanic, explaining what he was about to do. If he found he couldn’t approach the hive from cover, he would come back here to wait for the others.

Moon shifted back to Raksura, shouldered the waterskin, and started down the slope.

Moon flew the long way around, careful to stay out of sight of the hive, and stopped upriver to renew his coating of metal-mud. Then he found the other end of the gorge, which wound snake-like through the bulk of the escarpment, a long distance from the Dwei hive. He followed it back, staying cautiously low, finding the ruins of small, roofless stone buildings with crumbling walls, the remains of a road, and stairways carved into the cliffs.

Finally, as the gorge curved again, Moon found the beginning of the main ruin. He landed, blending into the shadows at the base of a rock fall. This could work, he thought, encouraged.

A sloping wall blocked the gorge from one cliff to the other, carved with worn figures of giant grasseaters. It had a gate, blocked by piles of old rubble and guarded only by two slim obelisks. Beyond it was a long, mostly-intact colonnade, and a maze of crumbling walls. Over the top of the cliff, he could just see the rounded dome of the Dwei hive where it sat further up the gorge. Dakti still lazily circled above it.

Moon slipped forward, moving quickly over the dusty ground, between the obelisks and over the rubble of the gate.

The partly-intact roof of the colonnade provided cover from anything flying overhead. The shade sheltered sand-colored lizards and green beetles that fled as he ran past. The colonnade ended in a long rambling building, still mostly roofed over, and he went from it to the next, and the next. Among the ruins were empty pools and fountains choked with sand, broken statues, and thornvines shrouding empty archways. The inner walls were painted with scenes of barges moving along a broad river, and desert plains, all in delicate faded colors. Some rooms were still packed with large clay storage jars, each taller than he was. At any other time, this place would have been a pleasure to explore, to poke into all its secrets.

Soon he passed through the sandy corridors of buildings darkened by the shadow of the hive. Then he reached an archway blocked by a solid wall of dusty gold-brown stone. He ran his hand over it and realized he had found the outer wall of the hive. The texture of the material was grainy, rubbery in places and stiff, almost brittle in others. All right, you got here, now look for a way in, he told himself.

He worked his way back through the building, finding steps that led down to what might have been a large, open plaza at one time, littered with broken stone columns. Now the hive sat atop it, forming a heavy roof over the paved space. They must have used this building to brace the hive, Moon thought, moving forward cautiously.

Small holes punctured the bottom of the hive, but he could see a much larger one ahead, maybe twenty paces across. Dim daylight fell through it to illuminate a circle of the worn paving.

That opening might be for ventilation, or to give access to the ruin as an escape route. Or to dump trash, because as he drew closer he could see the section of plaza beneath it was littered with big shells.

He reached one and crouched to examine it. It was curved and nearly four paces across, the iridescent surfaces scarred with recent claw marks.

Oh. I think I found the Dwei.

Moon had only seen Dwei from a distance, but he knew they had shells like these across their backs. He sniffed at the inside and winced. It smelled of recently dead flesh, and it had been scraped out with claws. Unless the Dwei ate their own dead and cast the remnants away like trash, which was possible but not likely, then the Fell had cleaned out the hive.

From somewhere far above his head, up inside the shaft, he heard a low, reverberating grumble. Moon froze until it faded into silence, then carefully eased back away from the pile of shells. Somewhere at the top of that shaft, a kethel lay sleeping.

So that’s not going to work, Moon thought, retreating quietly. But if there was one shaft up into the hive, there might be others.

After a little searching, he found one toward the far side of the plaza. No daylight fell through, but no Dwei shells littered the stone beneath it either. Moon jumped up to catch the edge and hoisted himself up.

The climb was much longer than he had expected, and also uncomfortable, with the waterskin bumping heavily against his side. The shaft led up a long distance, maybe a fourth of the way into the hive, then finally opened into a dark chamber.

Moon crawled out of the shaft to crouch on the edge, all his senses alert. The cave-like space was empty of anything but dust, and smelled of Fell mixed with a musty acrid odor. Dark openings in the far wall led deeper into the hive’s interior. He stood and crossed the floor to investigate.

Halfway across his foot slipped, and he stumbled on a suddenly uneven surface. It was a grate, a big one, made of the same material as the rest of the hive. Moon crouched and tasted the air. The acrid odor was stronger here.

Then a large clawed hand shot up through the grate to wrap around his lower leg. Moon nearly yelled in panic, managed to turn it into a low hiss, and tried to wrench free. The hand yanked at him, hard enough to drag him down between the bars. The waterskin of poison slipped off his shoulder. Desperate, he scrabbled for purchase on the bar, but the weight dragging him down increased a hundredfold and his claws slipped off the slick surface.

He fell down into a dark space and landed hard on rubbery ground. Something slammed down top of him, a big hand pinning his chest. A creature with a large round head with bulbous, multi-faceted eyes loomed over him. Its skin was dull green, with a soft slick texture.

A deep, raspy voice from somewhere to the left said, “What is it?”

“It’s a Fell,” another voice replied.

“I’m not a Fell!” Moon glared up at the creature looming over him. They were speaking something close to Kedaic, and he answered in that language. “I’m a Raksura, a consort. Look at the back of my head!”

There was a startled pause. His eyes adjusted, and he could see they were all around him, looming shapes. One said, “There are Raksura to the south.”

“Still shifters, still dangerous,” another replied.

“It smells strange,” someone else added.

“You stink, too,” Moon said, suppressing a snarl. They meant the metal-mud, but at the moment it was adding insult to injury.

Then the first voice said, “Let it up.”

The creature let go of him, and Moon rolled away, getting to his feet. He looked around, but there was nowhere to go.

The big chamber was full of the creatures. They were all taller and broader than he was, with heavy iridescent shells across their backs. Their wings were thin and fine, nearly translucent, and folded back along their bodies. Moon rubbed his chest where the creature had pinned him. They were strong, too. “You’re Dwei?”

The one that seemed to be the leader loomed over him, demanding, “Did you see others? Others like us?”

“What?” Then he remembered the shells. “I saw shells, down below in the groundling city. The Fell ate what was in them and threw them down into the ruin.”

It jerked back as if Moon had struck it, then turned away. A noise rose up from the others, like wood rattling, that resolved into a raspy groan. The sound conveyed dismay, disbelief, grief. It made Moon’s scales ripple uneasily.

Still facing away from him, the leader said, “Every two days, they took five of us away. They said they took them elsewhere, that if we did not resist, we would see them again.”

In the sense that eventually you’d all end up dead, Moon thought, swallowing down a hiss. The Fell were using the Dwei as a convenient food source while the flight stayed here. Some of the dakti could be left to fend for themselves or eat each other, but the kethel and the rulers had to feed at regular intervals. It made it even stranger that they hadn’t done this to the Raksura at Indigo Cloud, that they had left even the dead intact. But this was typically Fell behavior, dangling hope the same way they did to their groundling prey. He just said, “They lie.” The Dwei groaned again, more faintly this time, pain and grim acceptance. “What is this place?”

The leader didn’t answer, but one of the others, he wasn’t sure which, said hesitantly, “We kept our crops here, the dorgali and matra we grew in the cliff tunnels. The Fell forced us in here and blocked the door. They only come to take some of us away.”

The leader swung back around, staring accusingly down at Moon again. “Why are you here?”

He didn’t see any reason not to answer. “They attacked our colony. We drove them off, but they took some of our people. I followed them here.”

One of the others held up the waterskin. The leader said, “What is this?”

Moon hesitated, but what were they going to do with it, tell the Fell?

“It’s poison. It only works on Fell.” He wasn’t going to tell them it worked on Raksura, just in case they decided a test was necessary. “It makes them sick, keeps them from shifting.”

“That doesn’t exist.” The leader looked at the waterskin. “No one has heard of this.”

“It exists,” Moon said. “Groundlings made it.”

With deep skepticism, it said, “And the Fell drink it.”

“No.” Moon held onto his patience. “The groundlings drank it and the Fell ate them, and died. That was the only way they knew to make it work. We put it in the water in our colony.” He then admitted, “I can’t use it that way here. The rulers would have passed on a warning about poisoned water before they died.”

The leader blinked slowly, milky membranes sliding up to cover its eyes, then sliding down again. “You killed rulers with it?”

“And kethel and dakti. I saw a kethel drink the water and die. Another kethel ate its corpse and died.” He couldn’t read any emotion in the Dwei’s faces, couldn’t tell if they believed him or not. “Show me where the door is. I’ll go up through the grate and let you out.” It would be easier to find where the Arbora were kept with a lot of angry Dwei rampaging through the hive.

Someone in the back said, “The door is sealed only with a stone, but a kethel guards it.”

That didn’t sound encouraging, but Moon wasn’t ready to give up the idea of a massive distraction that would let him get further up into the hive. “Maybe I could find a way to—”

Something moved in the chamber above. Moon went still. He heard the faint clicking of dakti climbing across the grate. The Dwei made that sound again, the rattling groan. The leader cut them off with a sharp clack of its jaws. Then it called up toward the grate, “The Raksura is here!”

Moon stared at it, incredulous. “No!” He scrambled back, hissing, but the Dwei surrounded him. He made a wild leap, trying to reach the wall, but hands grabbed his legs, yanking him down again. Thrashing wildly, he clawed at their hands, flared his spines. His claws tore their thick skin, but they slammed him down to the ground. Pinned face down, heavy Dwei hands on his back, he growled, “Are you stupid? You think they’ll let you go for this?”

He could already hear grating stone from the far end of the chamber; the kethel must be moving the rock away from the entrance. The Dwei in front of him moved away, clearing a path for the kethel. The leader leaned over him, saying in a raspy whisper, “We know they will not.”

The floor vibrated as the kethel entered the chamber. Blood from the Dwei that he had scratched dripped on Moon’s back; it was clear and smelled like jasmine. Past their legs, he caught a glimpse of the kethel, its dark armor streaked with sand, lowering its head to menace the Dwei with its horns. The Dwei scattered away, releasing Moon, but as he pushed himself up, the kethel shot out a hand and grabbed him.

Moon hissed in furious terror, digging claws into the finger that was like an iron band across his chest. The kethel stared down at him, eyes dark with malice, and Moon knew it meant to eat him right here. He bitterly promised himself to do as much damage on the way down its gullet as possible. Suddenly, pain shot up his back, his neck, snapping his head back. He yelled, heard his voice drop and change as the pain washed over him and he shifted to groundling.

The kethel dropped him, and Moon landed in an awkward sprawl, no chance to catch himself. Panting, he rolled over, suddenly hyperaware of the cool damp air clinging to his clothes and his far more vulnerable groundling skin. He braced shaky arms to lever himself up. It was the same force the mentor-dakti at the colony had used, but far more violent. They’ve got another one here, he thought, looking up blearily. A ruler, still armored in Fell form, now stood beside the kethel. It seemed smaller and younger than Kathras, but no less dangerous.

The ruler tilted its head. “A consort. Just what we wanted.” He hissed out an order in the Fell language; Moon had heard it before but it had never sounded so close to Raksuran, as if he could understand it if he just listened hard enough.

A score of dakti raced around the kethel. Moon snarled, flailing away, but they swarmed him. He kicked one, managed to smash its kneecap, then got slammed back to the ground, three or four on top of him. After a second stunning clout to the head, the world swung out of focus.

The dakti lifted him up above their heads, their claws caught in his clothes, his hair, scraping at his neck, at his back where his shirt was pushed up. The oily texture of their hands on his groundling skin made him want to scratch himself bloody, fight until they killed him. He forced himself to stay limp, to play dead, and keep his eyes slitted.

They carried him out of the chamber, and he could hear the grating sound as the kethel rolled the rock back into place. It was dark. He couldn’t see anything but a ridged roof overhead. He knew they were going up, through a tunnel or passage that went up in long spirals. He memorized the route as best he could.

Finally they passed into a place with fresher air and daylight. Moon let his head flop to one side, and saw one wall of the passage was open to a vast space, lit by wan daylight falling from somewhere high overhead. It had to be the open center well of the hive.

Then the dakti stopped. He caught a glimpse of a round opening in the floor, right before the dakti flung him down into it. He fell a short distance, struck the rubbery ground, and rolled to his hands and knees, prepared to be swarmed again.

The dakti had dropped him into a shadowy chamber, light falling through long horizontal slits in the far wall. He looked up to see an opening high in the ceiling, set up into a short shaft. The dakti crouched around it and pulled some kind of translucent cover into place, sealing the opening. He looked around the chamber, and caught startled movement in the shadows. He froze, tasting the air. He scented frightened Raksura. Frightened Raksura other than me, he thought. “Who’s here?”

Someone said suspiciously, “Who are you?”

Before he could answer, a female voice said, “It’s Moon, the solitary—the consort Stone brought.” Arbora in groundling form edged into the faint light, watching him warily: four females, two males, all young enough to be barely out of adolescence. Their clothes were dirty and ragged, their hair lank from little access to water.

With breathless hope, another one asked, “Is Stone here?”

“No.” At least you’ve found them, and they’re alive, Moon told himself. It didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment considering he didn’t see any way he could get them out of here. He got to his feet, moving away to see more of the chamber. “They only took six of you?”

“Yes,” the first woman answered. She had skin the color of dark honey, curly bronze-colored hair, and she was beautiful, even past the dirt and the fatigue. “They brought us here in a sac. We were the only ones in it. They let us out when we got here, then shoved us into this room.” She added, “I’m Heart, and that’s Gift, Needle, and Dream.” She nodded to the other females, then to the two males, “And Snap and Merit. They’re all teachers, and Merit and I are mentors.”

“Not that it’s done us much good,” Merit said, sounding rueful. “None of us can even shift. We don’t know how they’re doing that.”

“How’d you get here?” Snap demanded, still watching Moon suspiciously.

“I followed the kethel.” He stopped, staring at them for a moment. They were all beautiful, their skin every shade from warm brown to coppery red to light amber. They were all more than a head shorter than Moon, but they were strong and well-proportioned. All young, all healthy, and two of them mentors. They picked them for breeding stock, he thought uneasily. The Fell still meant to make more crossbreeds. Unable to keep the whole colony, they had probably meant to take all the young Arbora, leaving the older adults and the sterile warriors behind, but they hadn’t had time. “Are you all right? They didn’t do anything?”

“Not yet.” Heart looked up at him, brow furrowed as she read his expression far too accurately. “Why are you looking at us like that?”

“No reason.” He had to get them out of here. He stepped back and jumped for the side of the shaft. He caught the ridge around the edge and dragged himself up handhold by handhold until he reached the membrane that sealed the opening. He pushed at it, but it refused to budge. The texture was stiff and slick, as impermeable as glass.

Below him, Snap said in frustration, “It’s no use. We stood on each other’s shoulders to get to it, but without claws we can’t get through.”

Moon kept prodding at the edge, looking for a weak point, but he was afraid the boy was right.

Heart asked, “But where are the others? Did the hunters get away? Knell said he saw—”

Moon’s fingers slipped and he dropped back to the floor. He absently wiped his hands. And if you got it open, what were you going to do then? The dakti were still up there, guarding them.

“The others are fine.” He gave them a meaningful look and jerked his head up toward the opening. The Fell might be listening; with Moon here they would have to realize that Jade and the other Aeriat couldn’t be far behind, but he didn’t want to spell it out for them.

Heart subsided, and the others held back frustrated questions.

Watching him carefully, Needle said, “At the colony, there was a ruler who said Pearl had left us, that she wouldn’t be coming back. He said they were waiting for Jade to join them, then we were going to leave the colony and go somewhere else.” She made a despairing gesture. “Here, I guess.”

Moon paced around the chamber, investigating the shadows. It was big enough for a few Dwei to sit or sleep in comfortably, and nearly featureless. “I think I saw that ruler. Right before Pearl tore his head off.”

There were some gratified hisses, and Needle hugged herself. She said, “I knew the ruler was lying.” She shot a fierce look at the others. “The queens are going to save us.”

They were still watching him worriedly, and Gift said, “But why did the Fell bring us here? And why us? If they just wanted to eat us. We’re small, and not much of a meal.”

Moon hoped to avoid that question. He stepped to the wall with the horizontal slits, and peered out. The chamber looked down on the hive’s vast central well, daylight falling down from some opening high above. The curving walls were ringed with bulbous chambers like this one, and open ledges. Wedging himself into the gap, he had a good view of the floor several hundred paces below.

A big tunnel opened in the side of the hive down there, and towards the center of the floor was a round shaft, maybe the one that had led up from the groundling ruin, the one that had shone with daylight. Two kethel lay beside it, stretched out in sleep, armored sides lifting with their raspy breathing. It was probably the two who had flown here from Indigo Cloud. From the distance and turns the dakti had taken to bring him here, he thought the Dwei must be imprisoned on that bottom level, not far from where the tunnel emerged.

Merit tugged on his sleeve impatiently. He had fluffy light-colored hair and wide eyes, and made Moon think of what Chime must have looked like as an Arbora. He persisted, “You know why they brought us here, don’t you?”

Maybe not knowing was worse. Moon turned back, and all their faces, staring up at him with hope and fear and dismay, made his heart hurt. He said reluctantly, “A ruler told Pearl and Jade that this flight wanted to... join with your court. We know they already had at least one crossbreed, a dakti with mentor powers. It was the reason that the court was trapped. It sees through the other dakti’s eyes, and does something so you can’t shift. There must be another one here; that’s what’s keeping us from shifting now.”

“A dakti?” Heart blinked rapidly. “But...”

Dream said, “That’s not even possible, is it?” She turned urgently to Heart. “We’re too different from Fell. We couldn’t... could we?”

Snap sank down to sit on the floor, as if his knees had gone weak. “I thought they were just going to eat us.”

“Why do they want to do this?” Merit shivered. “So they can get mentor abilities? Mentors are born at random. Even when two mentors mate, it’s not certain. We think it has something to do with queens and consorts mating with Arbora, but that’s just an idea. Those clutches are just as likely to be warriors, or ordinary Arbora.”

If Moon had to guess, which he didn’t want to, he would have said that the Fell meant to get mentors the same way Raksura did, by mating the Arbora until mentors were born. Only in Raksuran courts it was all done voluntarily. He didn’t answer, hoping the Arbora would leave it at that.

But Heart looked up at Moon. “But you’re a consort. They must want...”

“Uh, probably.” He folded his arms uncomfortably, not certain how much to tell them. They seemed perfectly capable of drawing all the terrible conclusions on their own. “That’s why the Fell stayed at the colony. They were hoping Jade and I would attack with Pearl and the others, that they could trap us.”

“But they didn’t trap you,” Dream put in. “Until now, I mean. And Jade and Pearl are still free, right?”

“We had a weapon.” Moon turned away again, knowing he was doing a bad job of reassuring them. He looked through the slit, down at the bottom of the well. The two kethel were still asleep, but some dakti flitted around down there now. “We can’t use it here. The rulers know about it now.” He wasn’t sure what had happened to the waterskin of poison. If the Dwei had hoped to use it somehow to bargain with the Fell, they were out of luck.

The Arbora were quiet for a moment, trading uneasy glances. Then Heart asked, “What about the others trapped in the colony? Are they all right? Did you see them?”

The others chimed in with questions then and Moon ended up telling them a little about the attack on the colony. He tried to keep the explanation confined to things it wouldn’t do the Fell any good to know, in case the dakti were listening or the rulers questioned them later.

Heart and the others hadn’t known that Petal and so many of the soldiers were dead, believing all the missing members of the court to be imprisoned in another part of the colony. Watching them cling to each other and mourn, Moon felt terrible that he couldn’t even tell them all the names of the dead.

“They kept us in those sacs,” Snap said, leaning against Merit for comfort. “Sometimes they let us out and brought us food, but only a few at a time. We couldn’t shift, and with the dakti and kethel there we couldn’t run away.”

Finally, when the Arbora had asked every question they could think of, and discussed the situation to the point where they were just repeating themselves, they settled down to try to rest, curling up against each other. Moon sat nearby, leaning back against the wall with the slits so he could look out at the central well. He wasn’t certain if they trusted him completely, but his presence seemed to give them a little hope, anyway.

The dakti didn’t return. Moon watched the sunlight falling through the top of the hive change from morning to early afternoon. He knew Jade and the warriors had had time to make it here by now. They should have found his trail and the metal-mud, found the message he had left on the rock, and made it into the groundling city. And are probably sitting down there trying to think how to take on at least three kethel at once. You never did work that part out, either. The Aeriat who had survived imprisonment in the colony were probably too weak to fly at all yet, let alone to follow Jade all the way out here.

A hollow in the back of the chamber held stale water, but the dakti hadn’t dropped in any food. Moon could go another couple of days before he got desperate, but the Arbora had already been through days of privation. They also hadn’t been allowed to shift in all that time, and that had to be taking its toll. Moon was thinking of food, how he could make the dakti give them some, where Jade was and what was taking so long, when a kethel growl shattered the quiet.

The Arbora all twitched awake, eyes wide with fear. Moon sat up straight, craning his neck to peer through the slat. Below on the floor of the hive, one of the kethel had heaved itself to its feet, and the other stirred in irritation. In response, dakti dropped down through the well, spiraling in flight to cling to the wall above the lowest tunnel—the tunnel that led toward the side of the hive where the Dwei were imprisoned. And the kethel have flown a long way, and they’re waking up hungry, Moon thought, watching grimly. At least the Dwei knew what was coming now; they had a chance to fight.

Snap and Heart crept to his side to peer out, the others gathering around.

“What are they doing?” Heart asked.

Moon couldn’t think of any way to make it easier, and they were going to see for themselves in a moment. “They’re going to eat some of the Dwei.”

Merit made a noise of dismay, and Dream shuddered.

Dakti drove five Dwei out of the tunnel. The Dwei stumbled in the brighter light, their round heads turning as they looked around. They didn’t fight, didn’t try to escape. Moon hissed in disgusted disbelief. “I told them I found broken shells in the groundling city. They still think the Fell aren’t killing the ones they take?”

“They must have thought you were lying,” Snap said helpfully.

The dakti drove the five hapless Dwei across the floor of the hive, closer to the shaft that led down into the ruin. If they meant to take them somewhere else, Moon would never know; one of the kethel grew impatient and pounced.

The first Dwei went down under its claws with barely a sound. The others scattered away, keening in terror. The second kethel leapt in to slap at them, sending them rolling helplessly across the floor. The crunching and tearing as the kethel’s jaws worked almost drowned out the Dwei’s cries of pain.

The Arbora retreated hastily from the openings, some covering their ears.

“Is that what they’re going to do to us?” Needle asked in terror.

“No.” Heart pulled her into a tight hug. “If they were just going to eat us, they would have done it by now.”

Merit looked away, swallowing uneasily. “What they’re going to do to us is worse.”

Any reassurance Moon could give them would be a lie or wishful thinking, so he didn’t say anything. Jade should be here by now. He was trusting her and whoever was with her to think of something.

One Dwei made a half-hearted attempt to take flight only to be swarmed by the dakti. They forced it down into the kethel’s reach again, and it batted the Dwei back and forth a little, then finally snatched it up in its jaws. The Dwei hardly struggled.

This doesn’t make sense, Moon thought. On the occasions when something large had tried to eat him, he had fought harder and more frantically than that.

This behavior was at odds with everything he had seen of the Dwei. They were much stronger and meaner than this. If all five had attacked one of the kethel at once, they could have done some damage. Unless... They had the waterskin of poison. They knew what it was. And he had told them about the suicidal groundling method of using it.

Moon stirred impatiently. It could just be too-hopeful speculation on his part, and even if it was true, one waterskin split five ways wasn’t much. And there was still one more kethel to worry about, the one guarding the Dwei prison. There was nothing to do except to wait and watch and hope.