The Serpent Sea

Chapter Three

Moon woke buried in blankets, with Jade warm beside him. His inner sense of the sun told him it was still some time before dawn, and the storm had calmed to the point where the wind was barely audible. He pulled a fold of fabric down, just enough to get a good taste of the air.

Nothing had changed since last night. The others in the hall breathed deeply in sleep, except for some of the warriors on the far side of the room. From the soft noises, they were enjoying each other’s company under the blankets. Good idea, he thought, and flipped the blanket back up to settle down again and nuzzle Jade’s neck.

She slid an arm across his waist, curling around him. Nipping his ear, she whispered, “When we know we’re settled here for good, we’ll start a clutch.”

He nodded against her cheek. He was looking forward to babies in the nurseries that had actually come from him and Jade. But first they had to make certain this place was as secure as it seemed, and that the court could find enough food in the surrounding forest. More things to consider when you were choosing a permanent place to live. He said, “We need to make a consort for Frost.” Since Jade had taken Moon as consort, Frost had been demanding that they get a consort for her, occasionally remembering to request queens for Thorn and Bitter.

Jade hissed, ruefully amused. “I never realized what fledgling queens were like. I’m starting to feel a little sympathy for Pearl and Amber, when I was that age.”

Moon didn’t have any trouble imagining Jade as an imperious little fledgling, making Pearl’s life difficult, but he wasn’t going to say so. There was something else he was reluctant to bring up, but he had to know about the awkward moment last night. “What did it mean when I made a bed for you?”

This time Jade sounded more annoyed than amused. “It’s an old custom. It means you want to sleep with me. Song was being a little idiot.”

“I do want to sleep with you,” he pointed out, emphasizing it by nuzzling her collarbone.

“Consorts have their own bowers.” Jade’s tone was teasing. She pulled him more firmly against her. “So they can be guarded and chaperoned.”

This was the first time Moon had heard about the guarding and chaperoning part. Though it made sense, with everyone being careful to inform him that consorts his age—normal consorts his age—were supposed to be shy delicate creatures who seldom ventured out of their colonies. “So you’re telling me that Stone and I are going to sleep up there above the queens’ level? Because it’s about thirty turns too late to chaperone me.”

She tugged at the tie of his pants, her claws carefully sheathed. “When Thorn and Bitter get past the fledgling stage, they’ll come out of the nurseries and they’ll need bowers. As well as any other consorts we happen to produce.”

“I don’t know how that’s going to happen, if I’m sleeping up there with Stone—”

Jade growled, and rolled on top of him, and that was the end of that conversation.

Moon drowsed for a while, and woke when Jade climbed over him to get out of their nest. He shook himself free of the blankets, stretching extravagantly.

Chime and Rill sat by the hearth basin, blearily waiting for the water kettle to boil. Flower was nowhere to be seen. Jade, who was waking the warriors by the simple method of kicking various piles of blankets, told Moon, “I’m going to take a look around, make sure everything’s all right.”

“I’ll come with you.” Moon climbed out of the blankets and pulled his clothes back on. They left while the others were still stumbling around.

Moon and Jade made a circuit of the perimeter of their new home, going first up to the greeting hall, where Knell and the soldiers said all was well. Looking around, it took Moon a moment to find Stone. He was still asleep, but in his winged form, curled around the pillars of the stairs, his black scales blending into the carving. “How does he do that?” Moon asked Jade, as they went back down to the teachers’ hall. “Sleep in his other form.” Moon could do it for short periods of time, but it didn’t give him much real rest. He hadn’t seen any of the others do it either.

Jade shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just one of the things that come with age.”

They walked the outer passages and found many of the Arbora already up and moving, scrubbing dirt and moss out of the bowers or the dry pools, or sorting through baskets and bags of belongings. As they passed a doorway into an unused room, Moon felt a gritty crunch underfoot and looked down. The floor was covered with broken pottery shards. He stopped to scrape the remnants off; fortunately none was sharp enough to penetrate the thick extra layers of skin on his groundling feet. Jade glanced back and said, “I hope they didn’t break anything important.”

Moon leaned into the room. More broken pottery was strewn across the floor, pieces with the same blue glaze as the tall jars stacked near the doorway. Several wooden bins, covered with delicately incised images of flowering grasses, stood against the far wall, and the lids had all been smashed. But dust had collected on the splintered debris. He stepped into the room to look into the bins, but they were all empty, except for mold. “This wasn’t one of us. It’s old.”

“I suppose they were broken when the old court left.” Jade dismissed it, turning away.

They moved on and took the next stairs down to the level below. At the bottom, they met Pearl, trailed by River, Drift, Coil, and a few other Aeriat, all in groundling form. Pearl flicked her spines at Jade and said, “Where’s Stone? We have decisions to make.”

Jade flicked her spines back. “He’s in the greeting hall, still asleep.”

The other warriors avoided Moon’s gaze, but River gave him a look of pure contempt. Pretending to ignore him, Moon folded his arms, so the sleeve of his shirt tugged up, revealing the gold bracelet. River looked away, seething.

Pearl said, “Then come with me.” And as if she couldn’t bear to leave the encounter on a mostly neutral note, jerked her head toward Moon and added, “Leave that.” She started up the stairs and her obedient warriors trailed behind.

Jade hissed at her retreating back, then turned to Moon. “Go on,” he told her, before she could speak. During the Fell attack, Pearl had had no choice about including Jade in governing the court, or what had been left of the court. If she was continuing that now, without Stone or Flower or anyone else to cajole her, it had to be a good thing.

Jade hesitated, lashing her tail. “I suppose I’d better.” She caught his shirt, pulled him close, and rubbed her cheek against his. “I’ll tell you what we talk about.”

Jade stepped back, jumped up to catch the wall of the stairwell, and Moon went to look for something to do. Pearl’s attitude didn’t bite as much as it might have. A real consort would probably have been bitterly offended at the slight.

Of course, it probably wasn’t good that he didn’t think of himself as a real consort.

He followed the sounds of activity to the passage outside and the platform where the flying boats were anchored. The door stood open, and he shifted to make the jump from it down to the wet grass. The sunlight falling through the canopy was bright and tinged with green, and the air was fresh from the rain, heavy with the intriguing scents of the damp forest. A few Arbora were unloading the last supplies from the Indala’s hold, while others tramped around in the mud of the platform, digging and looking for roots among the trailing vines. Niran, Blossom, and Chime stood on the Valendera’s deck, talking and looking up at the mast. Both boats seemed to have come through the storm with no serious damage, which must have been a relief to Niran.

Moon saw Flower standing knee-deep in the muddy grass, the only Arbora out here in groundling form, and went over to her. “They’re having a meeting in the greeting hall.”

She nodded absently. “I know. I’ve already had my say with Pearl. I think we should all live in the teachers’ levels for now. It’ll do everyone good to be all jumbled together.”

At the old colony, the Aeriat had lived slightly apart from the Arbora, and the hunters and soldiers had had separate bowers from the teachers and the small group of mentors. And the tree’s living quarters seemed to be designed for that same system. Moon flexed his claws and prodded thoughtfully at a root buried in the grass. “That’s not normal, is it?”

“No, but in thriving courts, living by caste doesn’t seem to create problems.” Leaning down to pull up the root, Flower added, “At the old colony, it just caused more trouble. We’d all been moving apart, separating into factions, losing our sense of each other.”

Moon had seen some of that, when one of the hunters had told him he should be sleeping in the upper levels with the Aeriat instead of down in the teachers’ bowers. Since by that point Moon had been ordered out of the court by both Arbora and Aeriat, he hadn’t seen much difference between them. And he had liked Petal, who had been the leader of the teachers before Bell. She had been one of the small group who had made Moon feel welcome in the court. As Flower paused and crouched to examine the leaves of a vine, Moon said, “Everybody was jumbled together on the boats.”

“Being jumbled together in comfort may be more productive.” Flower looked up at him, but from her expression her thoughts were on something else. “We’ll have to see what happens. It’s been turns and turns since this court was out from under Fell influence.”

The same could be said for Moon, though he hadn’t realized it until lately. It still wasn’t something he wanted to think about too closely.

Chime glided down from the Valendera’s deck and landed beside them. He said, “Everything came through the storm fine. I don’t think we’ll have to do much work before we send the boats back.”

The plan was to loan Niran a crew of Arbora and Aeriat to help him sail the ships back to the Golden Isles, then the Aeriat could fly the Arbora back to the colony. It would be a long flight, but it was the only way to get the ships back. “Who’s going with him?” Moon asked.

“We haven’t gotten to that part yet.” Chime scratched his head frills. “Blossom knows the most about how to steer the boats, and Bead knows the second most, but they’ll need more Aeriat.” He looked down, the tip of his tail twitching uneasily. “I’m thinking of going myself.”

“You are?” Taken aback, Moon stared at him. “Why?” Chime had never spent a night away from the old colony before the trip to the Golden Isles, and he hadn’t given the impression that he particularly liked to travel.

Chime shrugged. “I thought I’d do something useful.”

Flower eyed him thoughtfully, and he seemed determined to avoid her gaze. Moon reminded himself Chime wouldn’t be leaving permanently.

Strike, one of the younger hunters, bounded out of the doorway and landed in the mud with a loud squelch. He hurried over, saying, “Flower, Knell has some things he wants to show you, down in the lower levels.”

Moon and Chime hadn’t seen anything below this level, so they followed Flower back inside and down the stairwell. Strike led the way off the stairs into a wide high-ceilinged foyer, but Chime stopped to stare at the carving along the curving wall. “What happened here?”

Moon paused to look, as Flower and Strike continued down the passage. The carving covered most of the wall, a detailed depiction of a seascape, with tall rocky islands rising above ocean waves. But it was covered with holes, as if someone had struck at it with a knife or a chisel. Moon touched one of the gouges and felt rough tool marks and splinters. “Somebody pried out whatever was in here.” There must have been inlaid stones, like the carvings in the Aeriat levels.

“What a waste.” Chime brushed chips away from a section, distressed. “They broke through all the writing here.”

Bead wandered in through another doorway, and saw them examining the carving. She said, “I noticed that too. Whoever carved it must have wanted to take the inlay with her when the court left. I’m going to fix it when I have a chance. Spice has some nice chips of amethyst that I could polish up and fit in there.”

Moon touched an undamaged corner that depicted two warriors crouched on a branch, overlooking the scene. “They never show anybody in groundling form.” He had noticed that particularly in the upper levels yesterday.

“Not often,” Bead admitted, absently brushing more splinters out of the chiseled lines. “It’s traditional that queens and consorts are only depicted in their winged forms. You can show warriors in groundling form, but they get all spine-ruffled about it. Arbora sometimes show each other in groundling form, but it’s not common.”

Chime was still occupied by the broken carving. He picked at one of the gaps with a claw. “It’s like they bashed it out with a rock.”

“They must have been in a hurry.” Bead seemed to have too much on her mind to give the mystery much attention. “Oh, we found a forge down here, a big one, all lined with metal and stone. Pottery ovens, too. We should be able to get it all going again as soon as we unpack our tools.”

Chime turned away from the carving, distracted. “Are there more workrooms?”

Bead pointed toward a passage. “Huge ones, down that way.”

As they headed in that direction, Moon asked Chime, “How are you going to find metal in this forest?”

“There are rock outcrops scattered all over the forest floor, some of them with veins of ore. The old records have maps to the ones on our territory. And we can trade with other courts. Once we find the other courts.” Chime’s brow furrowed. “If they want to trade with us.”

Moon followed Chime down the stairs, finding three levels of large airy chambers, all facing into another central well. The walls were covered with carvings here too, a whole landscape of Raksura, Arbora and Aeriat, queens and consorts, woven in with unfamiliar symbols, plants, animals. Suspended over the well was a wooden ball studded with the white light-shells, in all different shapes and sizes. “This is more room than we ever had before,” Chime said, sounding overcome, his eyes on the glyphs carved above the round doorways. “For weaving, carving, pottery, metalwork…” He moved toward one of the rooms, pausing on the threshold.

Moon stepped past him. Merit was inside, along with a few hunters and teachers. It was a big room, winding far back into the tree, the walls lined with shelves. They stretched up to the curving ceiling, the material a richly-colored green and white stone, like polished agate. “What’s this for?” Moon asked.

Chime turned abruptly and walked out to the well, stepped over the edge and fell out of sight.

Merit watched him go, his face set in a sympathetic wince. He told Moon, “It’s the mentors’ libraries.”

And a too-pointed reminder that Chime wasn’t a mentor anymore. Moon went out to the well and jumped down to the next level, then the next. He found Chime at the bottom, in a central chamber not nearly as grand, sitting beside a large dry pool filled with turns’ worth of dead moss. More doorways led off this level, and from the comments of the Arbora who were exploring them, these were storerooms.

Moon sat down beside Chime, curling his tail out of the way. Chime slumped over, his spines drooping in dejection. After a moment, he said, “We don’t have nearly enough books to fill those shelves. We must have lost so much.”

Moon said, “Maybe they just left a lot of extra room.” But he was thinking about the ruined books he had found on the flying island back in the east. Moving a court as large as this one had been, there must have been so many things that had had to be left behind, or let fall to the wayside.

Chime snorted in bitter disbelief. “Not that it’s any of my business. That’s for the mentors to worry about.”

Moon didn’t know what to say to that. Chime wasn’t a mentor anymore, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. He watched the Arbora go in and out of doorways across the chamber, exclaiming over the things they were finding, making plans. “What did you do? Besides being a mentor.”

It was probably the wrong question, but maybe Chime needed to talk about it. Moon was beginning to understand how important their crafts were to the Arbora. There was no pressing need for weapons or any other metalwork, or new crockery, or for Bead to fix the damaged carving. But they were anxious to get the forge running, and had been just as pleased at finding pottery ovens as they had been at finding the herd of grasseaters at the lake. And nobody had turned the inside of this tree into a living work of art unless they wanted to, unless they wanted it as much as Moon wanted to fly.

Chime rubbed his eyes. “I painted. The leather cases for keeping paper, and for holding books together. You harden the leather with a paste, then decorate it.” He took a sharp breath. “I know it doesn’t sound like much—”

“Why can’t you still do it? It’s not like you need to be a shaman to paint.” Just because Chime had lost one ability, Moon didn’t see the use of giving up everything.

Chime sighed, frustrated. “I’ve been afraid to try. What if I can’t anymore, like I can’t heal or augur or anything? At the Dwei hive, when Heart wasn’t strong enough to put you into a healing sleep, I tried. I thought maybe I just had to be desperate to make it work now. But it didn’t. And you could have died.”

Moon shook his head. “You should try to paint. Then you’d know.” Chime grimaced at the thought and looked away. “Yes, that’s the point of not trying.”

There wasn’t an answer for that, either.

A voice above them said, “Moon? Chime?” It was Strike again, hanging one-handed from the edge of the balcony above. “Flower wants you to come see something. I’m supposed to go get the queens and Stone.” That didn’t sound good. “What is it?” Moon asked, pushing to his feet.

Strike waved his free hand. “Nobody knows—that’s the problem!”

Before hurrying up to the greeting hall, Strike pointed them back to the passage that led in toward the center of the trunk, and they found the way by following the trail of lit shells.

Flower and Knell stood in a junction of two passages, and at first Moon thought the dark, irregular blot on the wall was a shadow. But as they drew closer he saw it was something smudged on the wood itself. It stretched all the way up to the curving ceiling, and down to the smooth floor. The scent was like rot, like wood left in water until it softened and fell apart.

“What is it?” Chime demanded, and stepped close to peer at it. “A fungus?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Knell said, giving him a thoughtful glance. “The hunters saw it last night, when they came through here to make certain there was no danger, but they thought it was just moss. Today I saw there were spots of it all down these inner passages.”

Flower had made a small stone glow with light, and held it close to the dark splotch, studying it intently. “Moon, have you ever heard groundlings speak of anything like this? A blight that kills trees?”

“Kills trees?” Moon stepped forward, startled. He had thought this was a curiosity, not a threat. “This tree?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Flower beckoned him closer. “Look. This isn’t a growth on the wood, it’s the wood itself.”

Moon leaned close. She was right. The dark spongy substance still showed the grain. He touched it, pushing gently, and his claw sunk through. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” The Hassi had had a problem with fungus in their orchards on top of the link-trees, but it had been a mushroom-like growth that made the fruit turn sour, nothing like this.

Chime stepped down the wall, and picked cautiously at the damaged wood. It flaked away under his touch. “It doesn’t look like blight. It looks like the wood is just dying, for no reason.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Flower stepped back, her face etched with worry. “Because that’s what it looks like to me, too.”

Knell grimaced and shook his head in denial. “But this tree must be hundreds and hundreds of turns old. How can…”

Moon wasn’t sure how Knell meant to finish that sentence. Maybe How can our luck be this bad? that Indigo Cloud had come back to this place just as the ancient tree was finally failing.

He heard movement behind him and caught Jade’s distinctive scent, then Stone’s. He glanced up just as Stone came around the curve of the passage.

Stone’s reaction answered one question. Moon had just had time to form a slight suspicion that Stone might have known about this when he had brought the court here, that he had meant this to be only a temporary resting place, not a permanent home, and he just hadn’t bothered to inform anyone of his plans. But Stone was in groundling form, and as he stopped in the passage, his expression of shock was easy to read. Moon found himself wishing his suspicion had been right. At least then there might have been a plan for what to do next.

Stone put one hand on the wall. “This is heartwood.”

Jade stepped past him, and worriedly looked up at the blight spread across the curve of the ceiling. “What’s heartwood?”

He grimaced. “It’s the core of the tree. It can’t die, because it doesn’t grow, it doesn’t change.”

“Then what is this?” Flower pointed to the blight.

Stone abruptly turned away, back up the passage. There was a startled moment of hesitation, then they all scrambled to follow.

They passed Pearl and River out in the stairwell and Knell skittered to a halt to explain. Stone tore past out into the big hall with the Arbora workrooms. He jumped down into the well, shifted into his winged form in mid-air, then caught the lip of a gallery and climbed rapidly straight down the wall. Moon leapt after him, the others following.

He thought Stone was going all the way down to the roots, so was caught unprepared when Stone suddenly whipped over a balcony three levels down. Moon caught a pillar with his tail to stop himself, and swung up and onto the balcony.

Stone took a passage toward the interior, flowing down it like a dark cloud. His tail whipped back and forth, and Moon hung back to avoid being struck.

Then Stone stopped abruptly in front of a large hollow in the wall. Moon slid to a halt and backed up hastily, out of tail range, just in case Stone hadn’t wanted to be followed. But Stone shifted to groundling, and stepped forward into the hollow.

Now that the bulk of Stone’s other form wasn’t blocking the way, Moon saw there was a plaque at the back of the hollow, large enough to be covering a doorway, with a carving of intertwined branches with leaves and fruit. “The bolts are broken,” Stone said, and touched the carving.

As the others caught up, Moon shifted to groundling and stepped forward to look. Broken pieces from the side of the plaque lay on the floor near the wall, as if they had been kicked out of the way. He hissed under his breath, the realization making him cold. Like the carving in the stairwell. Like the broken bins and jars. He looked at Stone, whose face was still with suppressed fury. Someone’s been here before us.

From behind them, Pearl said harshly, “Stone, what is this? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know yet.” Stone shoved at the plaque, and with a raw creak it swung open, revealing a dark opening. It released the strong scent of stale air laced with a faint sweetness. Stone snarled and stepped inside. “Flower, make a light!”

Flower hurried forward, lifting the spelled rock she had used to examine the rotting wall. Moon moved aside for her, and she slipped through the doorway after Stone.

The light revealed an oval chamber, the walls rough and unworked, just dark, warm wood. There were no light-shells mounted anywhere either, as if no one was meant to be in here. Then Moon looked down at the floor. It was covered with white tendrils, like the exposed roots of a plant. The resemblance to something that lay in wait on the ground to whip up and grab unsuspecting passers-by made Moon jerk back, and he bumped into Jade.

She took his shoulders and moved him aside, and said quietly, “Stone, talk to us. What is it?”

Stone hissed, passing a hand over his face. “Someone’s been in here and taken the seed. It should be there, in the cradle.”

Moon craned his neck to look. In the center of the tendrils was an empty space, round, not much bigger than a melon. The tendrils around it were cut and had turned dark with rot. Stone continued, “The seed is what changes an ordinary mountain-tree into a colony tree, that lets the Arbora shape the tree and change it. Without it, the tree is rotting from the inside out.”

For a stretched moment the room was silent. He said something was wrong, Moon thought. Up in the consorts’ bowers yesterday, Stone had been uneasy. Not because of old memories, or seeing the place in this empty state after so long away. Because the tree itself must have felt different, wrong.

Flower groaned under her breath. River twitched uneasily and looked at Pearl, who stood like a statue. Then Jade let out her breath in a low hiss. She said, “Can you tell how long it’s been gone?”

Stone scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. “No. I’m not a mentor.”

Everyone looked at Flower, who lifted a hand helplessly. “I’ll have to look through our histories. I’ve never even seen a mountain-tree before, and I can’t augur the past.”

“They wouldn’t have taken it with them?” Jade persisted. “The court, Indigo and Cloud, when they left?”

“No.” Stone sounded certain about that. “There’s no other use for it, and it has to stay with the colony tree, or the tree dies.” He looked at her, his gaze sharp. “It can’t have been missing long. I came here two turns ago, to make sure nothing had happened, that the tree was still livable. It didn’t feel wrong then. And I think the blight would be worse if the seed had been gone for turns and turns.”

“It could be worse.” Chime sounded sick. “We haven’t had a chance to look at the roots yet.”

Everyone stared at him, and River growled.

“What did the seed look like?” Moon asked. Everyone turned to him, and he clarified, “Is it covered with jewels or metal? Is there any reason to steal it besides making another colony tree?” He was wondering if other Raksura had taken it, though that didn’t make much sense. Why take a seed to make a colony tree when there was a perfectly good colony tree, uninhabited and ready to occupy, right here?

“No, it looks like a seed,” Stone said. “Like it’s made of wood.”

“It must be a powerful artifact, though.” Flower bit her lip as she leaned down to touch one of the cut tendrils. “There are many magics something like that might be used for.”

Moon stirred uneasily. Like the way the Golden Islanders used the rock from inside flying islands to make their boats fly. That wasn’t a pleasant thought. If someone had stolen the thing for magic, it could have been cut to pieces, destroyed, anything.

“Maybe they stole other things.” Chime turned to the others. “We saw a carving that was damaged where the inlay had been pried out. Whoever did this must have passed that way.”

Jade nodded, her expression grim. “We’ve seen other things broken, in ways that didn’t make sense. As if someone was searching.”

Moon added, “They didn’t get as far up as the Aeriat levels. The stones are still in the carvings there.” The inlay was all up and down the main stairwell; the intruders couldn’t have missed it.

Stone’s eyes narrowed. “If they left other signs they were here—”

Pearl snarled suddenly, furious, and the sound echoed off the walls. Everyone but Stone twitched, and even he barred his teeth. Her voice a growl, she said, “These thieves left a trail! Find it!”

The trail might be old, but last night the hunters had been looking for predator scat and traces of recent occupation, not signs that intruders had searched the tree within the past couple of turns. Now that they knew what they were looking for, it wasn’t hard to find.

There wasn’t enough dirt or moss on most of the floors to show tracks, but on the level below, off a main stairwell, two hunters reported finding a room with more smashed storage jars. Others found several more carvings, on passage walls and the pillars supporting a lower stairwell, where inlaid stones had been pried out. “They were in a hurry,” Moon told Jade as they climbed down the well in the Arbora levels. “They could have checked every carving in the tree for inlay, but they didn’t.”

“It’s as if they knew exactly what they wanted, and didn’t waste any time once they found it,” she agreed grimly, and swung down onto the next balcony.

The trail led to a level far below the Arbora’s workrooms and the storerooms. This part of the tree had smaller passages and wells, narrower stairs woven through and around thick folds of wood. The floors were lumpy and the walls had been left rough and undecorated. Moon and Jade followed a passage toward the tree’s outer trunk, and found Knell and a group of soldiers and hunters there.

As Stone and Pearl arrived, Knell said, “All the doors down here are sealed from the inside, so the hunters assumed no one had used them since the court left.” He ran his thumb along the seam where the door met the wall. “But the other doors have a thick crust here, hard as rock, from turns of wind and rain forcing dirt through the cracks from the outside.” He glanced up. “This one doesn’t.”

Pearl hissed. “Open it.”

“Wait.” Stone frowned at the door. “Let the Aeriat scout it from the outside first.”

Jade regarded him doubtfully. “You don’t think whatever took the seed is still out there?”

“I don’t know what I think.” Stone’s voice was dry. “I just know I’m against the idea of opening any convenient passages to the ground at the moment.”

“Very well.” Pearl sounded as if it was an effort not to growl. Her spines twitched with impatience. “Hurry.”

With Stone, Chime, Vine, Root, and a few other Aeriat, Moon went up to the knothole entrance to take flight, making a cautious spiral down the outside of the tree.

They dropped past more platforms, through the spray of the waterfall. Some of the overgrown foliage was still flattened from the rain, but Moon spotted berry bushes, yellow vines that might be whiteroot, and tall slender nut-trees. They dropped further, until the sun was dimmed to a deep green twilight. The ground was thick with fern trees, their fronds spreading like giant parasols. The mountain-tree’s roots were huge, great ridges of wood sloping down from the massive wall of the trunk and running out and away. Moon didn’t sense any large animal movement, and the air tasted of the musk of small treelings. A whole tribe of greenfurred ones fled shrieking as Stone dropped down to perch on a root.

The run-off of the tree’s cascade formed a shallow marsh. Much of it was choked with weeds and lilies, but there were flat rocks arranged in a way that looked deliberate, and a lot of white objects that from this distance looked like flowers.

Moon landed on the upper ridge of another root, as Chime and the others lighted around him. He crouched for a closer look at the marshy water below and saw the white objects weren’t flowers; they were the elaborate spiraled shells of snails, some as big as his head, with blue and green speckled bodies. Chime climbed down beside him, and said, “They must have cultivated these for food. I don’t think we need any more lights, but we could use the shells for jewelry.”

Moon gave him a look. “Because you all need more jewelry.” From above them, Vine called out, “I think the door is through here!” Moon glanced up. Vine had landed higher on the root, where the ridge sloped up toward the bulk of the tree, looming over them like a giant cliff. He leaned down to peer into a cave-like opening in the living wood.

Moon hopped up to join him; the others scrambled to follow. The opening extended back into the tree, festooned with vines and stained with moss. He tasted the air, but there was no predator scent, and he couldn’t sense any movement. He looked back at Stone, who climbed up the broad root, then shifted to groundling. He brushed past Moon to walk into the cave.

Moon swung inside and dropped down beside Stone. Only dim light made it this deep into the crevice, but Moon could see that a path had been formed in the wood, leading in toward the trunk. The path was heavily coated with dead fern fronds and beetle husks and seemed to dead-end in a flat wall of rough wood. Then he saw the steps cut into the wall, and the round shape of the door, about ten paces up.

Stone stopped so suddenly Moon brushed his shoulder. Stone looked down at a hollow in the side of the path. Leaf mold had piled up in it, washed there by rain. He knelt suddenly and dug through the detritus. Moon realized the mold covered a huddle of yellowed bones, still wrapped in disintegrating cloth and leather.

“What is it?” Vine asked from behind them.

“Bones. Looks like one of them didn’t make it far.” Moon crouched down for a closer look as Stone dug out the body, which had fallen or been shoved into the hollow.

Moon asked him, “It’s not there?” He didn’t think there was much hope that the seed had been left behind. It wouldn’t be that easy.

“No.” Stone stood, his jaw set in frustration.

Chime slipped past Vine and Stone and crouched down to poke at the remains. Root and the others crowded around to see.

Moon picked up the skull, but without flesh there wasn’t anything to tell him what species it was. In shape it didn’t seem much different from his own groundling form, but it could have bare skin, fur, scales, feathers.

Still digging through the leaf mold, Chime pulled out a handful of small metal disks, badly tarnished. “I think those are buttons. There’s some thick leather down here, maybe a belt… There’s more than one here. There’s too many bones, and this.” He held up another part of a skull, this one with the jaw sheared off.

Moon heard a thump and twitched around, then realized it had come from the sealed door. Root bounced up to the doorway and knocked on it. After a moment it creaked, cracked, and then slid open, releasing a shower of dead bug shells. “We found groundlings!” Root reported.

Stone growled, irritated. “Groundlings that have been dead a turn.”

The others spilled out of the doorway, and Jade landed beside Stone. She looked down at the bones, frowning in dissatisfaction. “Well, at least we know it was groundlings, and that they came here about a turn or so ago.”

“This door doesn’t open from outside, and it was still sealed with a bar,” Knell said as he climbed down the wall. “They must have had help, someone who could fly up to the knothole, to get inside, and then let the others in down here.”

“One of us?” Song wondered. “A Raksura?”

“Or something else that could fly or climb.” Moon put the skull back on the pile of bones and stood. “It doesn’t have to be a Raksura.”

“Or they got some solitary to do it for them—” Root began, then twitched his spines in confusion. “Oh, sorry, Moon.”

Moon controlled his annoyance. Even during a crisis this serious, nobody forgot who had been a feral solitary.

Chime flicked his tail at Root. “The question is, how do we track them?”

Knell edged past Stone to examine at the groundling bones. “It’s been too long. We can’t track them.”

“We should search anyway,” Jade said, and looked up to where Pearl sat crouched in the doorway. “If they left their dead behind, they might have left other traces, some sign of where they came from.”

From Pearl’s expression and the angle of her spines, she had already gone from righteously angry to depressed. Moon didn’t think that was a particularly good sign. One of the problems at the old colony had been Pearl’s growing apathy; necessity, and being away from the Fell’s influence, had shaken her out of it. Now would be a terrible time for her to slip backward.

The moment stretched to an uncomfortable point. Then Pearl settled her spines, and said, “Go and search. Maybe they were careless.”

Moon felt the others’ relief. Their chances of finding something didn’t matter; the important thing was that their reigning queen wasn’t giving up. Or at least if she was, she was managing to hide it.

Jade acted as if she hadn’t noticed the lapse, and told Knell, “Send someone for Bone. We need all the hunters.”