by Martha Wells
“We can’t get the boat up stairs. Come on,” Jade said, not patiently.
The others stepped away reluctantly. Moon had to admit, it was intriguing. He wanted to see the top of the city, wanted a better look at the shadow-shapes sealed under the glass. With a long look at the stairs, as if he was reluctant to leave them as well, Stone said, “We’re coming.”
Root added, “It’s not like anyone wants to find the monster.”
Stone gave Root a nudge to the head, then shifted back to his winged form.
They moved through the darkness with their lights throwing shadows on the walls and the graceful lines of the off-center carvings. Some distance along, Rorra stopped to drink from her water flask, and made Delin take a drink as well. Moon and Chime stopped with them, just in case something terrible chose that moment to leap out of the shadows. Ahead, Jade noticed and slowed the group’s pace so she could keep them in sight. Rorra stoppered the flask and put it back in her pack, saying, “You really think it’s too dangerous to split up? It seems so empty.”
Moon twitched his spines uneasily. “It’s too dangerous.”
Chime told her, “The creature in the forerunner city made us and the Fell see things that weren’t there.”
As they started walking again, she said, “But we don’t think one is here now, do we? This is so different from the city you described.”
“The creepiness is the same,” Chime said.
Some time later, Moon saw Root catch up with Jade. He asked her something in a plaintive tone. She stopped, and pulled affectionately on one of his frills. She turned back and said, “We’ll stop for a moment. Root’s hungry.”
Stone set Bramble down, and shifted to groundling while she dug in her pack for the food she had brought along. They had some bread and some of the dried sea-weed that the Kishan swore was almost as good as eating meat.
Moon turned to ask Rorra and Delin if they wanted any when Rorra swayed and caught Delin’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she said, and put a hand to her head. “I feel ill.”
Moon stepped over to take her arm to steady her, and caught the scent of blood. “Are you bleeding?”
She frowned at him. “No.”
He looked down and saw a dark spot just below her left knee, above the top of her boot. “Yes.”
“What?” She stared at it, uncomprehending.
“Sit down, here,” Delin urged her, and he and Moon helped ease her down.
Sitting on the floor, Rorra let out a breath and admitted, “That feels better.” Moon helped her unbuckle the boot and ease it away from the cloth of her pants. Where the fabric and leather had rubbed against her skin, there was a bleeding sore. Rorra swore in Kedaic, and said, “This happens sometimes when I have to walk all day. But I didn’t feel it until just now.” She touched it carefully and winced. “And we haven’t been walking that long.”
It must have been there a while. Now that it was in the open, Moon could catch a scent of infection off it. Except that he was sure it hadn’t been there when Rorra had removed her clothes and boots to swim in the sea only yesterday.
Chime and Bramble shouldered Moon aside at that point, both proffering medical advice and bandages and simples. Moon left Rorra to accept their help or fend them off, and went over to Jade. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“She has a wound, she must have gotten cut during the battle,” Moon said. That was the only explanation he could think of. Except he didn’t know how Rorra could have been hurt without it tearing the tough material of her clothes. And it had looked like a chafing sore. “Is Root all right?”
“Just hungry,” Jade said, frowning absently.
Still chewing a seaweed cake, Root had gone over to help Bramble hold her pack open. She and Chime were putting together a quick simple for Rorra. Bramble had been carrying extra supplies for Merit and it was coming in handy. It wouldn’t have the same effect as a simple made with mentor’s magic, but the combinations of herbs and distilled oils still helped healing.
“I’m hungry too,” Briar said, keeping watch on the darkness ahead. “And thirsty.”
“So am I.” Moon rubbed his eyes. He felt grit at the edges of the membranes under his eyelids, but that was probably because of the sand in the air outside. Now that everyone was talking about it, he realized his stomach felt empty and his throat was dry.
Briar said, “We ate before we left. It’s only been an hour or so.” She flicked her spines, suddenly uneasy. “Hasn’t it? My wings feel heavy, like I’ve been walking forever.”
With relief, Song said, “I thought it was just me.”
Moon stared at them, then met Jade’s gaze. He knew they were sharing a near identical expression of disbelief. Moon tried to sense where the sun was outside the rock of the escarpment, and felt nothing. Uh oh, he thought.
Slowly, as if dreading the answer, Jade said, “Stone, how long have we been in this corridor?”
Stone, who had been staring absently down the dark cavern of the hall, turned and ambled back to them. “About an hour.” He saw their expressions. “What?”
Moon said, “We’re all hungry and tired like we’ve been walking for more than a day, and Rorra has a chafing sore on her leg that wasn’t there earlier, and it’s already infected.”
Stone took that in. Then he groaned, “Shit.”
Delin stepped up beside Moon and said quietly, “I fear you are right.” He rubbed his neck below his beard. “I shaved while we were preparing to leave, not knowing when I would have the chance again. I am not a young man, to bristle with hair after barely an hour’s time.”
“So when did it happen?” Jade said. Her voice was even but she was holding her spines neutral with effort. “After we picked this corridor?”
Briar’s spines twitched in agitation, and she turned to Song. “Do you remember how many stairwells we’ve seen? I was going to count them, just to make sure we could find our way back if there was another branch in the hall. Bone is always going on about the warriors not paying enough attention to tracking, so I was . . . But somehow I didn’t count them.”
Song shook her head. “I didn’t think of that.”
Stone said, “Bramble, get over here.”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but something in his tone made Bramble cross the distance in a single bound. Chime, helping Rorra fasten the bandage, turned to stare, startled. Stone asked Bramble, “How many stairwells?”
“Uh.” She blinked. “I thought I was counting them, but I can’t remember . . .” She looked around, spines lifting in suspicion. “How long since we’ve seen one? Or one of those insets in the floor?”
Song said, “I know I was checking those, and so was Root, to make sure we were still above the canal.” She tasted the air. “I can smell the saltwater, so it’s still below us—”
“Enough.” Jade held up her hands, claws spread. “We know what’s happened—we know what we think happened—how do we fix it?”
“I just don’t think we should move anymore,” Chime said, wearily. “We don’t know where we are.”
Moon nodded grim agreement. They had shifted to groundling to conserve their strength when they had started back down the hall. But after walking for some time, they hadn’t even reached the last stairwell again. That was assuming the stairwells were real, and not part of this trap.
The unchanging darkness and no sound except for their own movements and breathing was beginning to weigh on everyone. Moon found himself wondering how long Merit’s spells on the moss bundle and the cups would work. If they would be trapped here long enough for their lights to fade.
Chime had been more upset than anyone else, blaming his erratic extra senses for not warning them. Though Root had pointed out, “You thought it was creepy, everyone did. Maybe you just couldn’t tell the difference between ordinary creepy and this.”
Whatever this was. Chime had said, miserably, “Maybe that’s why I picked this hall.”
Moon had squelched that quickly. “Whicheve
r one we picked, this would probably still have happened.”
Jade added, “Yes, there’s no point in a trap like this if there are six ways to avoid it.”
Now Stone turned to Jade and said in frustration, “Maybe I should go on alone. Try to . . . get ahead of it.”
Moon thought that was a terrible idea. “We don’t know what ‘it’ is.”
Jade flicked her spines in a negative. “I don’t want us to split up. You might be still stuck like this, but unable to find us again.”
It sounded all too possible to Moon. And it must have to everyone else too, because Root edged nearer to Song, Bramble tucked Stone’s arm under hers, and Briar gently herded Delin and Rorra closer to the middle of the group. Chime, already standing shoulder to shoulder with Moon, said, “Yes, it’s too big a risk.”
Stone half snarled but said, “I know, I know.”
Jade stood there a moment, her gaze on the shadow at the edge of their lights. “So, trying to go back didn’t work.”
“We don’t know that we are even moving,” Delin pointed out. “We may be walking in place.”
Rorra added, “At least we know we’re actually walking. If we were lying on the floor dreaming this, we might get hungry, but I wouldn’t have gotten a sore.” With a simple plus a feather-soft stretch of cloth Bramble had brought, Rorra’s skin was now protected. Chime had suggested she float along with the flying pack, but she wanted to conserve it, since they weren’t certain how long they would be stuck here, and the moss that made its spells work wouldn’t last forever.
“So we know we’re standing up and walking, even if we aren’t making any progress,” Jade said. Her gaze fell on Bramble, who was bouncing a little, stifling impatience. Jade said, wryly, “Go ahead.”
Bramble said, “It’s just I know it sometimes bothers all of you when I get out of hand—”
Moon said, “Bramble, this is just the kind of situation where we need you to get out of hand.”
All the Arbora liked stories, and making up stories, and speculating on everything from the motivation of rival courts to every type of intrigue that existed. Bramble was particularly good at it, often to excess. Stone gave her an encouraging nudge forward and she said, “First thing I thought of was that spell you all were trapped in that time in the city in the mountain-thorn.” Everyone nodded, and Chime started to object, but Bramble continued, “Of course this isn’t the same. Here, time is clearly passing, our bodies feel it passing, we’re hungry and tired, it’s just that something keeps confusing our heads, making us think we haven’t been here that long. But it’s not something affecting our memories, because of course otherwise we wouldn’t remember that we had realized something was wrong.”
Bramble paused for breath, then continued, “So I think this is protective, to keep people from getting any further into this city. And I think it started after we passed that last set of stairwells and the last window down into the canal channel, because since then nothing has changed, the corridor looks the same. I’ve been trying to see if the carvings are changing, but a lot of them are just repeating patterns, and the light’s too bad to tell.”
“That’s good,” Chime said, startled.
Song poked him in the arm. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
Moon said, “It means Jade’s right, splitting up won’t help.” He wanted to make sure everyone understood that part. A situation where anyone who had separated from the group was still trapped, but alone and unable to find the others, was a nightmare he didn’t intend to participate in.
Delin had his fingers tangled in his beard, staring into the distance, deep in thought. “I feel your reasoning is sound, Bramble. If we are some short distance after the last stairwell, what do you think it was that triggered this trap? Was it merely that we stepped over some line imperceptible to us, or was there some object?”
“There wasn’t anything on the floor,” Chime said, “so if it was an object, it had to be on the walls.”
Stone turned away, looking up. “So if we’re in a short stretch of hallway, walking it over and over again, we might be between two of Bramble’s objects, both mounted on the walls.”
“They aren’t my objects,” Bramble protested.
“No, not your objects, and we don’t know that they’re actually there.” Jade studied the walls. “But if they are, we can’t get out from between them by going forward or backward—”
“We need to try going up,” Moon finished. “This city isn’t designed for people who fly. They may not have thought about that when they made the trap.”
They all looked up. The glow from their lights only went up so far, the dark stretching up beyond. Moon felt a prickle down his spines. The darkness seemed to take up more space than it had before, as if the ceiling was higher. “If you’re right,” Bramble said, “it means this city definitely wasn’t built by our forerunners, and it also wasn’t built by people who were enemies of our forerunners. If they were trying to trap people who could fly, they’d have put a top on the trap.”
The other thing Arbora liked were sweeping conclusions. Moon wasn’t sure Bramble was right about what it meant, but it would be interesting to find out.
“A point to think about,” Chime said, his spines twitching uneasily. “We might end up in a situation where we’re climbing endlessly, instead of just walking endlessly.”
The other warriors stared at him, appalled. Stone grimaced. Delin said, “One of you will be carrying me. It will be your decision.”
“We’ll risk it,” Jade said. “Root, take Delin.”
“We need to hurry.” Stone stepped away and shifted.
Bramble hung the net-light on one of Stone’s claws and Stone started up the wall. Jade leapt up next, Bramble starting up behind her. Root followed with Delin, then Song, then Rorra used her flying pack, staying close to the wall. Then Moon started up with Chime and Briar.
They stayed together in a tight group, furled wings just brushing, Stone’s tail hanging down to curl up just below them. Moon glanced down and saw darkness seem to fill the space below them like muddy water poured into a bowl. He thought about dropping one of the lighted cups to see if the floor was still there, but if they were stuck here much longer, they might regret the loss of any light source.
“We should be getting close to where the ceiling curves,” Chime whispered.
Moon squinted, trying to see it above them, but the net-light bounced around too much as Stone climbed. Under his scales, his skin itched with nerves.
They climbed past a carving of something that might be a stylized sun, the rays streaming off to the upper left, and Moon was sure they must be near the curved ceiling, but he couldn’t see anything but wall above.
He was looking up when Stone’s form suddenly rippled, as if Moon saw him through a haze of heat. The ripple flowed downward over the others, then Moon’s body went numb. The wall spun and there was a roar in his ears, inside his head. His claws slipped on the stone. Above, Jade shouted, “Keep climbing, don’t stop!”
Moon scrabbled to keep his grip on the wall. He couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t tell where his claws were or how hard to grip. Beside him Chime started to slip down the wall and Moon grabbed his shoulder and gave him a shove upward. Briar, near to sliding helplessly herself, grabbed Chime’s wrist and tried to pull him up with her. Bramble skittered down the wall almost on top of Moon and he caught her by the frills and shoved her up again.
Then Rorra grabbed Briar and jerked her up, dragging Chime along with her. Chime’s tail slapped Moon in the face and Moon grabbed it, and was pulled straight up the wall with them.
His ears popped and the world was suddenly right side up again. There was a ledge just above his head and Jade leaned down from it, grabbed his collar flange, and hauled him up and over.
Moon braced himself on the floor, still shaken. A quick glance around showed him that the others were all here, in various states of disarray, and that this wasn’t a ledge, but a large space,
a gallery looking down on the hall below. The walls he could see were carved with the same sort of designs, the ceiling also curved. It hadn’t been here before, he was certain of it; whenever Stone had held the light up, it had reflected off a solid curved ceiling. He said, “We were right.”
Jade squeezed his wrist and stood. “Bramble, remind me to thank Bone for insisting you come along.”
Bramble clambered to her feet and lifted the net-light. “You would have gotten here eventually, I just shortened the trip a little,” she said, but her spines flicked in pleasure.
Chime crawled to the edge of the gallery and looked down. “I can’t see the hall we were in, but it must be down there.”
Rorra pushed to her feet, swaying as she got her balance. “There’s one of those stairwells, going down. The last we passed, perhaps?” She took a step nearer, peering into the dark, and pointed toward the far end of the room. “And there’s one going up.”
“Careful,” Delin said, as Bramble gave him a hand up. “Do not get too close to the downward stairs. We know the trap extended up some distance.”
Moon got to his feet, giving Chime and Root a hand up. Briar and Song were already standing, looking around the room cautiously. Stone hooked the net-light around a claw and took a quick turn around the big room. Then he shifted down to his groundling form. “There’s no way out of here but those stairwells.”
Jade considered the stairwell that led downward warily. “I don’t think we can risk it. It must go straight down to the hall we just left.”
“Back into the trap,” Delin agreed.
“I don’t want to do that again,” Root said fervently. There were murmurs and spine twitches of agreement all around.
As the others talked, Moon took one of the lights and went to the wall, following it all around the room. Briar and Song trailed behind him. There was nothing that indicated any secret ways out, not even a crack. At the opposite side, Stone met him with a dry expression. “I tried that already.”