by Martha Wells
The bright shafts of illumination came from bundles of webbing that sparked and sizzled with light, as if they were burning without flames. Either the webbing itself was flammable or the miners had done something to it to cause this effect.
What the light was shining on made Moon just huddle there and stare.
The bundles of light cut through the shadow to reveal a city that should have been collapsed under tons of dirt. This should be a buried ruin, with miner tunnels drilled through the remnants. Instead it was all still here, the valley floor a roof over a section of a carefully preserved city.
The open space was ringed by tall, narrow pyramids, hundreds and hundreds of paces high. Moon was perched on the enormous sloping wall of one, and dark gaps between them showed that the city went on for some distance. At the feet of the pyramids were smaller structures, all square and blocky, like small houses. They were clustered thickly, with only narrow pathways between them. In the center there was a square open plaza.
Following the strands of the web, visible where the light reflected off it, Moon saw it led down across the lower part of the city to vanish among the smaller structures. The ceiling overhead was a smooth dome, unbroken except for the jagged opening the miners had carved out. The dome must have been constructed to cover the city, then concealed by turns of dirt and grass and jungle.
This meant Ventl’s tunnel might not be a dead end, but might lead deep enough into the ground to reach this city cavern, or at least its outskirts. Moon eased forward and started down the slope of the pyramid, his claws gripping the pitted stone. More empty baskets slid by on the webs overhead. A pyramid on the far side of the open area had a web system on its slope, with light bundles hanging from the strands and a few miners hauling up full baskets. But it was still too dark to spot any sign of the prisoners. Moon needed to get down to where those miners were digging; that was the only spot where he could see any activity.
As he climbed down the slope, Moon wondered, But why did the Cedarrin leave? This still looked like a perfectly functional city, in far better shape than some places Moon had lived. And they had taken such care to bury it in a way that left it intact. And what are the miners still digging for? Was there something buried under the city? This place had been deserted and concealed long before the fishers had arrived, long enough ago for its existence to be nothing more than a rumor connected with the rebuilding of the trade road. It smelled of rock and earth and somewhere water, like a cavern; he didn’t scent any rot. The Cedar-rin dead interred here must be nothing but dried bones.
Maybe the miners wanted the bones.
The shadows grew deeper as Moon climbed down to the street level. The slanted wall ended in a narrow path, barely four long paces wide, that led off through the blocky buildings. There was no room for wagons or draft animals and it would have been barely wide enough for two primaries to pass side by side. Moon followed it, feeling his way in the dark, heading across the cluster of houses toward the base of the pyramid where the webs had ended and the light bundles were concentrated. He heard sounds of digging, the grinding of rock, an occasional thump as something heavy was moved, but with the confusing echoes it was hard to tell the direction.
The buildings were all fairly small, with steps leading up to them, and doorways and windows blocked in by stone. It was impossible to say if they had been dwellings or places that sold goods or storehouses or what. It would make sense if this area was all some sort of market and the homes were in the pyramids, but he knew from experience that it was often hard to guess how groundlings or other species lived based on just their dwelling places. The truth was usually odder than anything he could imagine.
Moon reached the last house and cautiously peered around the corner. The path fed into a much wider avenue running along the base of the nearest pyramid. This was where most of the light bundles were, and the webs with their sliding baskets passed overhead and down into the space directly in front of the pyramid. It had a doorway, big and square and framed by heavy stone lintels and pillars. Until recently, it had been walled up by stone blocks, just like every other door Moon had seen. But now the blocks had been broken through until there was enough space for miners to walk in and out. They dragged out baskets of dirt and broken pavement, then attached them to the lower branch of the web system. It snaked away, supported by more of the glittering scaffolds, and ran down the avenue to disappear between the smaller structures. Two miners walked along it, hauling baskets of debris away from the pyramid.
Moon hissed, frustrated. At least ten miners were loading baskets, not counting those who had just left to haul their loads away. He tasted the air carefully. The miners didn’t have much scent, and neither had the Cedar-rin, but he could just detect a more distinctive odor of fur. It was in the slight current of air coming from the doorway the miners had broken open. Ventl must be in there somewhere.
So Moon was going to have to get past the miners. But taking on ten at once wouldn’t go well. And he had meant to try not to kill any; if the others found any ripped open bodies, they would know he was down here. If they had sent Kall and Benl, or what was left of Kall and Benl, after Moon, he must have made them angry enough that they might just drop everything and start looking for him. But he couldn’t see any other way.
All the miners suddenly froze in place. Moon froze too, trying to blend into the wall of the little house. But he hadn’t moved, they couldn’t have heard him.
Then the miners dropped their baskets and charged across the avenue and into the maze of buildings. Moon flinched back against the wall, but they didn’t come near him. They cut straight across the houses, climbing over the blocky roofs, squeezing through the narrow pathways. It was baffling, but at least it cleared the way through the broken doors for him.
Then he heard the clash of metal weapons. The Cedar-rin, he thought, exasperated. Somehow the miners had heard them enter the city.
Moon climbed the wall of the house to the flat roof. It gave him a better vantage point to watch the miners, but he couldn’t see the Cedar-rin. Ventl’s tunnel access must have led them through some passage on the far side of the city.
Moon struggled with indecision. He should look for the prisoners while he had the chance. But if Ghatli was still with the Cedar-rin … He didn’t want to rescue Ventl only to find that he had let Ghatli be killed.
None of the miners seemed to be paying attention to anything but the Cedar-rin somewhere ahead of them. Moon dug his claws into the flat stone roof and extended his wings. He jumped up, used his wings for an extra boost, and landed on the roof of a house with a better view.
The Cedar-rin had just entered the plaza at the center of the city, spilling into it from one of the narrow pathways. The space was deeply shadowed but the Cedar-rin took advantage of its size as the miners charged in. They mobbed the first two miners and slashed at their legs. A primary rolled under one to stab it from beneath. More drones rushed to block a pathway, trapped the miners in it and forced them to climb the houses and leap down onto the Cedar-rin’s sickles.
But how did the miners know they were here in the first place? Moon wondered. He hadn’t heard or scented anything, and he hadn’t spotted any miner sentries anywhere. If the miners knew the Cedar-rin were here, why hadn’t they detected him?
More Cedar-rin ran through the plaza to attack the miners. Moon didn’t see Ghatli, and hoped for an instant that she had wisely decided to stay outside once she had shown the Cedar-rin the tunnel. Then a small figure dodged around a group of drones and ran toward an open pathway. Ghatli. Moon half-groaned, half-snarled.
He leapt to the roof of the next house to keep her in sight. She reached the pathway and ran down it, then dodged down an intersection to avoid a knot of fighting. Then she stopped, looking around in desperate confusion.
She had obviously been hoping that the prisoners would be held in some easily spotted place, and the size and darkness of the strange city was a shock. Moon, perched some distance above her on the
roof of a house, was also desperate. He was going to have to shift to talk to her, to tell her she had to get out of here. That was going to be a tricky conversation.
Then one of the miners turned into the pathway from the plaza and moved in Ghatli’s direction. There was a house in the way, so it hadn’t seen her yet, but as soon as it reached the next junction, it would spot her. Ghatli faced the other way, peering uncertainly toward the light that shone from the base of the pyramid ahead, clutching her fishing prong. Moon rolled his eyes. Well, at least that was settled.
Moon leapt off the house and landed on the miner’s back, grabbed one of its legs and flipped himself under it. It flailed but he ripped his foot claws through its tender underside to spill its entrails. He shifted to groundling and shoved the dead body off him, and rolled to his feet in the junction just as Ghatli turned around. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, baffled. “You were behind us on the road!”
Moon hastily moved forward so she wouldn’t see the very recently dead miner. There was no non-suspicious answer for her question, no way to really explain his presence. He said, “Ghatli, you need to leave. Turn back the way you came, go back down the tunnel—”
“I have to get Ventl!” Ghatli was clearly just as determined as she was terrified.
“I’ll get him. That’s why I came,” Moon told her, trying to sound reassuring. He glanced behind him just as two miners and more Cedar-rin drones spilled into the pathway, fighting viciously.
“I can’t go back that way,” Ghatli said, jerking her fishing prong to emphasize the point. “Do you know where Ventl is?”
“This way.” Moon caught her hand and pulled her along, down the path toward the avenue. He was going to find a hiding spot for her among the houses, then look for Ventl.
But as they got closer to the avenue, Moon caught movement overhead. He looked up in time to see several miners pass through a shaft of light as they climbed down the upper web system. They were coming down here to attack the Cedar-rin. And the sound of fighting was drawing closer as the miners on the city floor fell back and the Cedarrin pursued them.
And Moon and Ghatli were now almost directly across from the temporarily unguarded entrance to the pyramid. There might not be another chance. Ghatli pointed. “There? Is that where they took Ventl?”
“I think so.” Moon made his decision. It was probably a bad decision, but that was nothing new. “Come on.”
Moon led the way across the avenue and through the piles of debris and discarded baskets, and up to the door of the pyramid. It was dark inside, lit only by the reflected glow of the light bundles behind them. A corridor with open doorways on each side led forward toward a large stairwell. The scent of fisher was a little stronger, carried on a faint breath of moving air. Moon stepped inside, an anxious Ghatli on his heels.
It was difficult to see, but as they went down the hall Moon could smell recently disturbed dry earth and traces of rot, mixed with more complex scents that he couldn’t recognize. The last doorway at the far end had been made larger by the miners knocking the side pillars out. Past it was a large dark space, barely lit by one or two distant light bundles, and Moon waited for his eyes to adjust.
“How did you get here ahead of us?” Ghatli was still breathing hard, but sounded less panicky and far more focused.
There was still no good answer for that. Moon began to make out details in the cavernous chamber past the doorway. It seemed to span the width of the whole pyramid. Sections of the paving had been torn up, but instead of disturbed earth, it revealed small shallow chambers buried beneath the floor, each about four paces long and two wide. “These have to be the graves, the Cedar-rin graves,” Moon said to Ghatli. But the ones he could see were empty. “The miners must have taken all the bodies.”
Moon stepped away from the doorway. This was getting stranger and stranger. He spotted faint light coming down the stairwell from the level above. That was where that draft and the hints of fur scent were coming from. The stairwell was Cedar-rin-sized and hadn’t been made wider by the miners. The scents and air drafts seemed to indicate that it was connected to the bigger grave chamber. “Let’s try this way.”
Keeping her voice carefully low, Ghatli said deliberately, “Moon, wait. Tell me. What are you?”
Moon turned to look at her in the meager light from the stairwell. It might have been better to seem bewildered at the question and say “what do you mean?” but somehow Moon just couldn’t do that. With no mental wall between his real self and his groundling self, there was nothing for him to fall back on. If he couldn’t pretend to himself that he was just another groundling, he couldn’t pretend it to her. Not while she was looking at him like this.
If Ghatli had been unsure, his blank response had just made her all that more certain, had confirmed every suspicion. She said, “The one the miners wanted, the person who killed their scouts. That was you.”
Moon couldn’t even try to deny it. “Yes.” His throat was so dry the word barely came out.
He saw Ghatli swallow back fear. “Moon, you don’t even have a knife. You are strong and fast, surely, but—What are you?”
“When the Cedar-rin asked that question, you told them it wasn’t their business.”
“I didn’t want them distracted. But now I’m asking it. What are you?”
Moon squeezed his eyes shut briefly. He should have known this was coming when he hadn’t been able to convince her to leave. Maybe he had known it was coming. He didn’t have much choice, if he still wanted to get Ventl free. And the heavy shadow in this corridor wasn’t going to help. He said, “Remember I’m not a Fell.”
She said, “What?” and then Moon shifted.
Ghatli clapped a hand over her mouth and made a strangled noise. He shifted back to his groundling form and she fell back a step, made more choking noises, then started to swear in her own language. “Mova getta, bazada, dis’tril de—” The only good sign was that she seemed more outraged than afraid. Possibly after the close calls with the miners, she had used up most of her fear already. She finally managed to say in Altanic, “You’re a Fell! You slept in my house!”
“I’m not a Fell.” Caught between that familiar bitter resentment and despair, Moon added, “And I also used your bathtub.”
“Stop that! Stop, implying that I … That’s not what I meant! I don’t turn people away because of how they look … You …” Furious and confused, Ghatli shook her head, her white hair flying, her ears twitching. She brought herself under control with effort, and lifted her hands helplessly. “You really look like a Fell, Moon.”
“No, I look like the descriptions of what Fell look like.” He took a deep breath. This wasn’t the first time he had had this conversation. Or tried to have it. He didn’t usually get this far. And even if occasionally one person believed him, the others in their settlement or tribe or group didn’t, and it wasn’t worth their life to defend him. In any other situation, he would give up and fly away, but this wasn’t any other situation. “If I was a Fell, you wouldn’t be able to say these things to me. Fell rulers can make people believe anything they want. If I was one, it would never occur to you to be suspicious. Anything I did, whatever I did, you’d find an excuse for it.”
Ghatli shook her head again. “But then what are you?”
A few other conversations had gotten this far, but this was where they usually fell apart. “I don’t know.”
Ghatli grimaced in disbelief. “How can you not know? Who doesn’t know what they are?”
“When you’re the only one.” Moon rubbed his forehead. He felt sick and exposed. “I had a mother, brothers and a sister, and they were all killed. Turns and turns ago. They were the only ones like me I ever saw. The first time I saw the Fell, it was in Saraseil. I’m not one of them.” He was very sure of that. Besides his own gut instinct, Moon had had time to examine Liheas’ body in detail, before and after killing him, and there were just too many differences.
Somewhere outsi
de the pyramid, he heard movement, the distinctive scrabble of miners’ claws on stone. They had run out of time for this. “They’re coming back, Ghatli. I’m going to rescue Ventl, and then leave; do you want to come with me?”
Ghatli almost growled with frustration, but then said, “Right, yes. One more question. Why are you helping us?”
“Because you let me sleep in your house.” That wasn’t the reason. Moon didn’t know what the reason was. He was just tired of looking at dead groundlings.
He led the way up the steps and Ghatli hurriedly followed him. They reached the top where a wide corridor stretched away. It had floor to ceiling windows on each side, separated by large blocky pillars, that looked out on the cavernous chamber that seemed to form the rest of the pyramid’s interior. Moon could hear more movement below now, miners and the scrape of feet on stone. He moved to the nearest pillar and whispered, “Get over here, they’re coming.”
At least Ghatli didn’t hesitate to step into concealment behind him. Moon was still less scary than the miners, which he supposed was a good sign.
Below, light blazed across the big chamber. It was a miner carrying a small web-light bundle like a lantern. Then more miners moved into view, crossing the disturbed pavement. They were herding several injured Cedar-rin drones, and one tall primary, prodding them over and around the open graves in the floor. All the Cedar-rin were disarmed, their armor bloody. “Surely they didn’t kill all the others,” Ghatli whispered.
Moon doubted it. He was willing to bet many of the surviving Cedarrin had fallen back to the tunnel. They had a way in now, and they had a better idea of how many miners they were dealing with. Retreating and sending for reinforcements was the only sensible act. Of course, that didn’t mean the Cedar-rin would do it.
The miners took their prisoners further into the pyramid. Moon waited until the group was well past before he stepped away from the pillar and slipped quietly down the bridge to follow them. Ghatli crept along behind him.
The miners passed by a tall pile of debris and Moon didn’t realize it was made up of jumbled bones from the graves until the drones cried out. The primary said something, a short command, and all the drones quieted. Ghatli whispered, “Not many bones for all these open graves. Maybe they eat the dead, not the living.”