by Martha Wells
Moon wasn’t so sure. If they live off carrion, even the carrion of sentients … Except this wasn’t carrion, it was dried bones. That just didn’t seem like a practical food source for a whole species. There couldn’t be that many mass graves like this. At least he hoped not. “That can’t be it. It has to be something else.”
“At least the dead are dead, and don’t know anything about it,” Ghatli added. “It’s not so terrible that way.”
The miners headed toward a square structure at the far end of the chamber, and Moon stopped in the cover of the next pillar to watch. The structure was set back at an angle in the shadows, and as the miners drew closer with their light Moon saw it had open walls, and was just a set of pillars with a roof atop them. It could be a mortuary temple, set here in the middle of this room of graves …
There was movement inside it. And the light caught lines of webbing, forming bars. The miners had turned it into a cage for their prisoners. “We may have found Ventl,” he whispered, and Ghatli made a quiet noise of relief.
The miners reached the makeshift cage, and one did something to a section of webbing. It swung aside and the new prisoners were forced to enter.
The webbing was reattached and the miners retreated, moving rapidly across the disturbed ground now that they weren’t hampered by slower-moving bipeds. Moon said to Ghatli, “I’m going to go let them out.” Then they would have to make their way back to the tunnel where the Cedar-rin had come in. That was the part he was mostly worried about.
“I’ll come with you,” Ghatli said.
Moon turned to face her. “I’m not going to walk.”
“What?” She hurriedly stepped back as he shifted and extended his wings. “Oh.”
“I’m going to land on top of it, and start cutting the web.” He was hoping to avoid showing himself to the Cedar-rin. It would be easier if he and Ghatli could just grab Ventl and let the Cedar-rin make their way out on their own. “Once I let them out, I’ll come back and get you.”
Ghatli shook her head, determined. “I want to go with you. I can climb down from here and go across, while you’re—”
“If you come too, you have to fly over there with me.” Moon thought that would be a deal-breaker.
Instead, Ghatli lifted her chin. “Very well, let’s go.”
Moon swallowed back a hiss. He should probably just stop trying to figure out groundlings. He said, “All right, I’m going to pick you up.”
He leaned down and lifted her. Her little body was more solid than it looked. “You can hold onto that ridge of bone around my neck.” She gripped his collar flange. “Like that.”
“What do we tell them about you?” Ghatli said, a little breathless, probably from fear and shock at her own daring, “When they see you—”
“They’ll try to kill me. We’ll worry about it later.”
As he crouched to leap, Ghatli said, “I think you’re helping us because you have a deathwish.”
“I don’t know.” Maybe. He knew he didn’t have a lifewish.
Moon chose an angle where the prisoners wouldn’t be able to see him approach. Two flaps and a long jump took him across the chamber. He landed on the flat roof of the temple and set Ghatli on her feet. He didn’t hear any exclamations of surprise from the inhabitants and guessed the stone was so thick that his landing had been silent. This close the cage smelled like urine and feces and very dirty fisher. The web was anchored around a short pediment along the front. Ghatli went to the edge and leaned over to look inside, dangling her head down. “Ventl?”
Ventl’s voice said, “Ghatli!” Now there were startled exclamations.
“Quiet!” Ghatli turned to Moon. “Help me get down.”
“Just be careful,” he told her, and caught her arm to lower her over the pediment and down the front of the structure. He didn’t like letting her out of arm’s reach, but she needed to be able to get the prisoners organized for their escape.
Ghatli dropped the last pace or so and landed on the pavement in front of the cage. She peered through the web. “Disl! Meryl! We thought you were dead! Are all of you here?”
Moon bared his teeth in annoyance. With other fishers than just Ventl in the cage, his vague plan wouldn’t work. Once they were free, he was going to have to fly ahead and try to clear the way for them. He pried at the web, but it was harder and thicker than the type that made up the baskets. Moon pried at it, then sawed at it with his claws. It hurt; his claws had obviously not been designed for cutting through glass-like substances, more for clinging to branches.
“All but Denin and poor Benl,” Ventl told Ghatli. “The others have been trapped here for days, without much food or water. But at least the miners didn’t stick those brain-eating things in them.”
“Who is out there with you?” Eikenn’s voice demanded.
“It’s Moon.” Ghatli, wisely, gave no further details. “We’ll get you out.” She added, “Tell me, Eikenn of Cedar-rin. Why is this happening? What do the miners want with your dead?”
Eikenn didn’t answer, and Ghatli swore in frustration. “Tell me, or we won’t help you.”
Moon, to add verisimilitude, stopped cutting the web.
Maybe Eikenn really believed Ghatli would abandon the fishers, or maybe she just didn’t see a reason to conceal it anymore. “An told you our species can communicate to a certain extent at a distance, without sound or gesture.”
“Yes.”
“When we die, this does not stop.”
Ghatli was silent. It took Moon a moment to remember to keep cutting the web. The fishers had mentioned stories of ghosts associated with this area. Apparently they weren’t just stories. Eikenn continued, “There is no consciousness that can be spoken to by the living, but our dead continue to … not speak, but make sound. They sing to each other in their eternal sleep. After a time, when there are so many dead that the sound begins to drown out the living, we seal the city and leave it to them, and go to found another.”
“Oh.” Ghatli sounded blank. After a moment, she added, “So your dead are not quite … And the miners are … This seems very horrible. I understand your anger.”
Moon understood it too. This was far more horrific than it had seemed. He hoped the dead weren’t aware of what had happened to them. To lie there in your grave and listen to the digging … He twitched his spines, the skin under his scales creeping at the thought of it.
Eikenn’s armor creaked as she moved. “We do not know what benefit the miners derive from ingesting our dead. But I suspect they must communicate in a way similar to our silent exchanges. There must be some connection.”
Moon bet that was it. The miners must be able to hear the Cedar-rin dead too, and maybe they could hear the live Cedar-rin as well. That would explain how they had known the Cedar-rin had entered the cavern.
Ghatli said, “Ah. That does make more sense. I thought perhaps—” Moon practically heard her reconsider telling the Cedar-rin that she had thought the miners were using their dead as just a food source. “Never mind.”
Moon felt the web bar snap under his claws. The slight sound made one of the fishers curse in alarm, and the others shushed him. Moon leaned on the web and twisted, and the whole section quivered.
The echo of rock clinking warned him just in time. Moon sat up and squinted toward the far end of the chamber. Yes, there was light moving down there. He leaned over the pediment and whispered harshly, “Ghatli, they’re coming! Find somewhere to hide.”
Cursing softly, Ghatli scrambled to get away, the fishers inside urging her to hurry. Moon watched her fling herself into an open grave behind the temple and then flattened himself below the pediment. If the miners saw that the web was loose, hopefully they would think it was just a natural break. But if one came up here to fix it, he was in trouble.
After a short, nervous time, Moon heard the crunch of miners moving across the broken pavement. A fisher whispered, “They’re coming.”
Ventl, Eikenn, and a mixture o
f other voices hushed him.
The light grew brighter and the sounds louder and closer. Then a voice said, “We would speak.”
Moon tensed. It was Kall’s voice, or the voice of Kall’s reanimated body. Below him, Eikenn said, “You want to speak? You destroy our sacred dead, and mock us with the still-warm corpse of our brother. What do you have to speak of?”
“You have abandoned this place and the resources here. Why do you return?”
Moon had to see who was really doing the talking. He flattened his spines and pushed himself up just enough to see over the pediment.
Several miners stood at a short distance from the temple, one holding a light-bundle. But in front of them stood Kall, and something else. Moon supposed it must have been a miner too, but it was twice the size of the others. It had extra arms, or feelers, between each of its legs.
Kall said, “We have taken these resources for our own. I heard the power of this place echo through the rock, and I led the others here. It is ours now. You have no right to attack us.” The miniature miner buried in Kall’s back must be there as a translator, because it had to be the large miner standing by who was really speaking. Eikenn had been right, the miners did speak silently to each other, and couldn’t communicate with other species without this extreme method. It didn’t bode well. A species that couldn’t talk to anyone unlike themselves without killing someone first would not have learned how to negotiate.
And if the miner’s leader truly couldn’t see any reason why the Cedarrin might object to the miners breaking in here and digging up their ancestors to eat, then he didn’t know how Eikenn was going to explain it.
Eikenn clearly didn’t know either. She said, “This is our city, the resting place of our honored dead that you have desecrated, that you call resources. Now that we know how to fight you, the Rin will come here in as many numbers as it takes to destroy you utterly.”
Another miner moved forward, as if it meant to speak through Kall too. Then the leader lifted one of its big legs and slapped it. It staggered back and its rear legs collapsed under it. Moon blinked, startled. It was the first time he had seen the miners interact except to work or fight as a team. The other miners skittered away, their rapid movements conveying a nervous tension. He hadn’t seen that before either.
Kall said, “I need your dead to grow. They are dead, you have lost your claim on them.”
Right, Moon thought, impatient, arguing with these people is a waste of time. Now if the miners would just give up and leave so they could finish the escape.
Eikenn said, “Our dead sing to us, we can hear them! You have no right to silence them, to use them—”
“I ingest them, I grow in power.” There was a pause, and Kall added with stubborn persistence, “This place is no longer yours, I have taken it.”
Eikenn’s voice was eerily calm. “Then we must kill every one of you.”
The leader wasn’t saying “we” anymore, Moon noted. Maybe it was the only one eating the remains, getting the power. Some of the miners skittered forward again, and made darting motions at the leader. The one it had knocked down pushed itself up and just stood there, its fur trembling above what must be breathing orifices. It looked furious.
The leader rounded on the other miners and they retreated a little. The leader turned back and Kall said, “If you tell your people not to attack us, we will give you what you want.”
Eikenn made a noise that might possibly be a bitter laugh. “There is nothing you can give us except to leave here, leave our dead, and never return.”
The other miners quivered, skittered around, even more badly agitated. Moon wondered if they had ever fought anything capable of killing them before. He had thought the miners had sent Kall and Benl to the caravanserai as retaliation because they were angry at what he had done to their scouts. But maybe what they really were was afraid. And now they knew the Cedar-rin could kill them too, and would come down here after them to do it, and that there were many more on the way.
Obviously some of the miners didn’t like that so much, and if the only reason they were down here at all was so their leader could become more powerful …
Kall began to say, “We are not done here. If you come, we will kill—”
The angry miner leapt on the leader’s back. They rolled in a wild scramble, legs flailing, dust and debris flying. The others clustered around, darting in and out, so it was impossible to tell whose side they were on. The light-bundle fell, rolled a little distance away. Moon shoved himself upright and reached for the webbing again. They weren’t going to have a better chance.
As he wrenched at the section of web, Ghatli ran around to the front of the cell. She grabbed at it and pulled, urging the prisoners, “Come on, push!”
Moon wrenched at the loosened sections and felt it break somewhere lower down. It ripped free of the stone as the prisoners pushed at it. Moon leaned down and told Ghatli, “Lead them out. I’ll stop the miners if they come after you.”
She waved an acknowledgement and Moon stepped back from the edge as Ventl, several fishers, and a number of Cedar-rin spilled out of the cell. It was hard to tell in the dark but it looked like Eikenn was the only primary. He wondered if she had let herself be caught, either to try to communicate with the miners or to collect information she might be able to pass on to the other Cedar-rin through their mental connection. A few drones looked back at the temple, trying to see who had been on the roof, and Moon crouched behind the pediment.
He heard their hurried steps over the debris-strewn pavement. It would have been quicker to go out via the bridge, but while the Cedar-rin might have been able to climb up to it, the fishers and Ghatli probably couldn’t. He lifted up a little to check where they were, and saw in the illumination from the fallen light-bundle that Ghatli had swung wide to avoid the fighting miners. She jumped over the open graves and dodged around the piles of rock and broken pavement. The fishers followed her in a tight anxious group. Eikenn and the drones moved faster, but then Eikenn split off and ran toward the miners. No, not toward the miners. Toward Kall.
Moon jumped up and flapped hard, passing over the miners. He landed and crouched in the rubble. He could see Eikenn clearly from here as she ran into the lighted area around the struggling miners. Kall stood unmoving. She ran up behind him, scooped up a rock, and smashed it against the base of his neck.
All the miners froze, even the two who were locked in combat. Moon groaned to himself. He wished she hadn’t done that. He understood why she couldn’t leave Kall’s body as an animate toy for the miners, but he still wished she hadn’t.
Kall collapsed and Eikenn sprinted away. The leader shoved aside its miner opponent and lunged after her.
Moon craned his neck to try to see where Ghatli was, but the shadows were too thick. He could still hear running from that direction so they hadn’t reached the passage out of the pyramid yet. He waited until Eikenn passed by, then leapt at the leader.
He landed atop it and raked his claws through its furry back. It flipped sideways to throw him off and he jumped away to land between two open graves. He turned in time to see a blaze of light streak toward him and dove sideways. Eyes dazzled, he realized one of the miners had thrown the light-bundle at him. He rolled to his feet and leapt upward. He felt something brush his foot-claws and knew he had had a very close call.
The leap gave him just enough time to get a sense of where the miners were; his eyes were still dazzled but he heard their big bodies move over the broken paving. He landed and went into a crouch, just as the leader leapt atop him. Moon slashed upward as the mouth and hands reached for him but his claws barely grazed what should be the soft underbelly. The leader wasn’t only bigger, it was much tougher. A wiry hand grabbed for his face and he bit at it. As the creature tried to fold over on top of him, he shot out from under it.
The leader lunged at him and Moon leapt away, used his wings to propel himself a good fifty paces, then did it again. He spotted Eikenn running to
ward the big doorway at the far end of the chamber but the others had already vanished.
Moon reached the doorway just ahead of Eikenn. She stopped when she saw him, hefted the rock that she held. Moon guessed that his silhouette in the shadow and dim light was not reassuring, but he wasn’t going to shift. He said, “Just keep running.”
She threw a look back at the rapidly approaching miners and then darted through the doorway. Moon followed her through and out to the pyramid’s entrance. In the avenue beyond, the drones had stopped to wait for Eikenn. Ghatli and the fishers had stopped with them, waiting uncertainly. Eikenn ran down the steps to the drones and Moon leapt into the air again to cross over the avenue and land on a roof in the first row of houses. This provoked some alarmed noises and hasty shushing from the fishers. The drones appeared to be waiting for Eikenn’s verdict.
From here he had a better view, but the chamber seemed even darker than it had before. He caught movement among the shafts of light where the basket-moving web was, and saw miners climbing down the strands. But he couldn’t see any miners waiting among the paths between the houses. “It’s clear so far, but you’ve got to hurry,” he called down to Ghatli. “They’re not going to be far behind you.”
“This way, this way,” Ghatli whispered. “If the Cedar-rin won’t come, leave them.”
“Why are we following a monster?” one of the fishers whispered back.
“Shut up, Kenyl!” Ventl said.
They all plunged into the first pathway and hurried along it. After a moment of indecision, Eikenn followed with the drones.
Moon hopped two roofs over and caught a miner hiding between two houses. He dropped on it and ripped it apart before it had a chance to react.
The leader and his group of miners burst out of the pyramid into the avenue. The leader hesitated, its front legs waving in what might be uncertainty. More miners charged down the avenue and the leader started into the first pathway.