by Martha Wells
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 anybo
dy 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.