by Martha Wells
There is believed to be a fourth class, or possibly a female variant of the Rulers, called the Progenitors.
Common lore holds that if a Fell ruler is killed, its head must be removed and stored in a cask of salt or yellow mud and buried on land in order to prevent drawing other Fell rulers to the site of its death. It is possible that only removing the head from the corpse may be enough to prevent this, but burying it is held to be the safest course.
THE
SIREN DEPTHS
MARTHA WELLS
VOLUME THREE OF THE BOOKS OF RAKSURA
Night Shade Books
An Imprint of Start Publishing LLC
New York, New York
Other books by Martha Wells:
The Element of Fire
The Death of the Necromancer
City of Bones
Wheel of the Infinite
The Wizard Hunters
The Ships of Air
The Gate of Gods
The Books of the Raksura
The Cloud Roads
The Serpent Sea
Stargate: Atlantis
SGA: Reliquary
SGA: Entanglement
The Siren Depths
© 2012 by Martha Wells
This edition of The Serpent Sea
© 2012 by Night Shade Books
Cover illustration by Steve Argyle
Cover design by Martha Wade
Interior layout and design by Amy Popovich
Edited by Janna Silverstein
All rights reserved
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-59780-440-0
eISBN: 978-1-59780-439-4
Night Shade Books
http://www.nightshadebooks.com
To Troyce Wilson, for believing in me.
Chapter One
“It’s a long way,” Moon said. He walked along the wide expanse of the branch, his heel claws catching in the rough wood. The air was fresh and cool and green-tinged early morning sunlight filtered down through the thick layers of the mountain-tree’s leafy canopy. “I think you’re taking too many Arbora.” He was trying to come up with better objections to the trip, but so far that was all he had.
“I know I’m taking too many Arbora.” Stone was in his groundling form, sitting on the branch, surveying the two flying boats below. “Try telling them that.”
The boats had been tethered to one of the colony tree’s larger garden platforms so they could be loaded more easily. Both were from the Golden Isles, with long graceful hulls made of lacquered wood and sails fan-folded up into the single central masts. Together the two ships had been large enough for the entire Indigo Cloud court to crowd aboard, but on the way back they would carry only four overexcited Arbora, six warriors resigned to their fate, and one impatient groundling.
A small crowd had gathered on the boats and the grassy platforms below the hulls, mostly Arbora carrying provisions aboard or finishing off the last few repairs, or who were saying goodbye to the travelers. Several warriors flew circles around the masts, staying out of the way.
“I can see why you need Blossom,” Moon admitted. Niran, the groundling whose family owned the vessels, had taught Blossom to pilot the smaller ship, the Indala, on the long journey to the Reaches. She would be piloting it again on the longer journey back to the Yellow Sea. Once the two ships reached the Golden Isles and Niran’s family, Stone and the other Raksura would fly back under their own power, the warriors carrying the flightless Arbora. “Why do you need the others?”
“Company for Blossom. And Niran.” Stone unfolded long legs and pushed to his feet. His groundling form was lean and tall, like Moon’s groundling form, like the groundling forms of most Aeriat Raksura. He had one bad eye, partially blinded by a white haze across the pupil, and was so old his skin and hair had faded to gray. He also wore gray, pants and a loose shirt. “And for me. I’m not spending this trip trapped on those flying baskets with nobody but warriors to talk to.”
Stone was cranky, moody, and had lied to get Moon to follow him across the Three Worlds, and Moon wanted him to leave slightly less than he wanted to lose a wing. They were the only two adult consorts in the court, and Moon needed the company and the reinforcement. And Stone was the closest he had ever had to a father, or a male relative of any kind. And he thought he had succeeded in concealing all that, but one of Stone’s more annoying qualities was his ability to guess what Moon was thinking. Stone glanced at him, amusement in his one good eye, and said, “I won’t be gone that long.”
Before Moon could retort that he didn’t give a piss how long Stone was gone, Stone shifted, dropped off the branch, and spread his wings to glide down toward the flying boats.
Stone’s winged form was huge; tip to tip his wings were more than three times the size of Moon’s twenty pace span. Raksuran queens and consorts grew larger and stronger as they grew older, and Stone was very old. Old and experienced enough to get the boats and Niran to their islands and the Arbora and warriors safely home, Moon reminded himself. He knew all his objections were irrational. And maybe you’re just jealous. Squelching that thought, he dropped off the branch, snapped his wings out, and swept down toward the platform.
On the way down, Moon banked out to catch the spray from the waterfall where it fell from a channel in the mountain-tree’s entrance knothole. The water plunged down to collect in various pools on the wide platforms extending out from the trunk, formed where the tree’s thick branches grew together and intertwined in broad swathes.
Moon circled above the Indala and Valendera where they were tethered near an irrigation pond, rope ladders dangling down from their decks so the Arbora wouldn’t scale the wooden hulls. Sanding out claw marks had been one of the major repairs they had had to make, along with rebraiding ropes and patching tears in the sails. From what he could see, the water casks and food supplies had already been loaded, and the Arbora on the decks mostly just milled around, talking.
Moon spotted Chime near the stern of the Indala and landed lightly in the high grass next to him. Chime ducked as Moon shook the water off his scales, and said grumpily, “Consorts are allowed to sleep late, you know.”
Moon lowered his spines and folded his wings into a compact mass on his back. “I wanted to see them off. What are you doing up this early?” Chime didn’t usually crawl out of his bower-bed until mid-morning at the earliest. The times Moon had slept with him, he had had to climb over Chime’s unresponsive body to get out.
“I wanted to see them off too, but I’m also on patrol today.” Chime absently kicked a tuft of grass, annoyed.
Moon was unsympathetic. Patrol meant a day of circling the immediate area under the mountain-tree’s canopy, watching for predators and other incursions, not exactly a difficult job. And while it might be dull, at least it was a necessary task. Trying to change the subject, he said, “I’m glad you decided not to go with the ships.”
Chime shrugged his spines a little uncomfortably. “After Flower died, I thought I’d better stay here. Maybe I can give Heart advice, at least.” He had started out life as an Arbora, a mentor; the pressure of disease and lack of warrior births at the old colony had forced the change to warrior on him. Even after all this time, he still wasn’t fully reconciled to it.
Moon said, “Heart can probably use the help.” She was the most powerful mentor in the court now, the leader of the caste, since Flower had died two months ago. But she was young, and some members of the court weren’t happy with her as chief mentor. Like they weren’t happy with a mostly feral solitary with no bloodline as their first consort.
“Maybe I’m a little afraid, too,” Chime said, as he looked up at the Indala. The ship moved gently, swayed by the breeze, the light wood creaking. “Our last trip was…a little much. That’s as close as I want to come to being eaten by something.”
That was putting it mildly. “I don’t think this trip will be that bad.”
“I hope not. The mentors have been doing auguries, and they hav
en’t seen anything bad, but…” Chime sighed in resignation. “You know that’s not always reliable.”
Yes, Moon knew that wasn’t always reliable.
A last flurry of Arbora leapt or scrambled down off the boats. Blossom and Bead appeared at the railing, saw Moon and Chime, and waved, both of them bouncing with excitement. Moon waved back, though he wished they weren’t going either. He liked them, and they both tended to defend him to the other Arbora. He tried not to feel like he was losing some of his best allies and told himself they would only be gone a few months at most.
“Here comes Jade,” Chime said.
Moon looked up as Jade banked down from above, the soft vivid blue of her scales standing out against the gray wall of the mountain-tree’s trunk. She headed directly for the Indala’s deck.
“I guess Pearl’s not coming.” Chime watched the knothole, but no one else appeared.
Pearl didn’t like groundlings, but it was Moon’s opinion that she didn’t much like Raksura, either. The Arbora had held a formal goodbye for Niran last night, and Pearl probably considered it all that was necessary.
Moon partly extended his wings and leapt up to land on the railing, careful not to score the newly polished wood with his claws. Chime landed after him and headed down to the stern toward Blossom and Bead.
Jade stood on the deck, speaking to Niran. “I want to thank you again for helping us,” she said. “If you hadn’t, we would never have made it here.” She stood out, even among the brightly colored Arbora crowded around. As a queen she was larger, stronger, with a silver-gray web pattern over her scales. Her mane of frills and spines reached all the way down her back to the base of her tail. Her only clothing was a broad necklace and belt with silver chains linking polished opals.
Niran shook his head, a little self-conscious. He was about the size of an Arbora, but slimly built, with gold-colored skin and long straight white hair. He had distrusted the Raksura at first, but forced proximity and shared danger had brought him a long way since then. He said, “It was my grandfather who insisted on helping you, but I’m glad he did.” He waved a hand at the clearing, taking in the mountain-trees, the platforms of the suspended forest, all of the Reaches. “I wouldn’t have missed this trip for anything. My only regret is that Grandfather will be furious that he missed it, and undoubtedly take it out on me.” He nodded to Moon and added, “And I know he would like to see you again, if you ever return to the east.”
“I won’t be going back,” Moon said. He wasn’t happy to see Niran go, either. In the times when life with the court became overwhelmingly strange, it had been good to have a groundling to talk to. But he knew how much Niran missed his family and the Golden Isles. “But thank him for me.”
Everyone said their last goodbyes, or in Stone’s case, cuffed Moon in the head and said, “Don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone.”
Moon and Jade retreated to the knothole to watch the boats leave. The Arbora on the platform untied the ropes and both craft lifted easily into the air. Their sails didn’t expand; the ships were powered by tiny pieces of rock from the heart of a flying island that allowed them to travel on the lines of force that crossed the Three Worlds. The sails were only for extra speed on windy days. The Valendera floated gracefully off the platform, then turned to find the path through the green caverns of the mountain-tree forest. The Indala followed, its hull scraping a spiral tree on the edge of the platform and its turn just a little jerky. Moon hoped Blossom didn’t run into anything on the way out of the Reaches. The path upward through the tree canopies wasn’t that far away, and he thought she would do better once she was up in the open air.
That was Moon’s last tie to his past, to the groundling world, severed. It should have felt like a relief. Moon wasn’t sure what he felt. Which was nothing new, so maybe he shouldn’t worry about it.
Jade took Moon’s wrist. She looked thoughtful. “Do you wish you were going?”
Startled and guilty, Moon felt himself flush. “No,” he said. “Why would you think that?”
She shook her head, and watched the boats slowly vanish into the dim light and mist of the forest. “You’ve always traveled so much. Is it hard to stay in one place?”
“No, it’s not hard. It’s just…different.” Moon didn’t think staying in one place would be the problem.
Three Changes of the Month Later
Moon had, at several points since they arrived at the new colony, asked various people exactly what consorts were supposed to do, besides be mated to a queen to produce royal clutches and infertile warriors for the court. The fact that no one seemed to have a straight answer wasn’t encouraging.
When he asked Chime, they were out watching over the Arbora hunters, who were stalking game on the platforms of the suspended forest. The court was still unsure of all the dangers in this new place, and it was much safer to have a group of warriors keep watch when the hunters were focused on their prey, while the soldiers stayed behind to guard the platforms and entrances of the colony tree. Since Aeriat, especially royal Aeriat, didn’t normally hunt, Moon was technically supposed to be just along for the exercise, even though he had more experience with hunting and being stalked than all the warriors put together.
Moon had been able to help a little with the warriors’ other new duties, like exploring Indigo Cloud’s new territory and helping the hunters make detailed maps of the platforms and the connecting bridges between them. They were also noting predators and all the different types of grasseaters and where they ranged, which were abundant and made good staple prey, and which were scarce and better left alone to increase over long periods.
Answering his question, Chime said, “Consorts are supposed to listen to the Arbora, any concerns they have, or things they aren’t happy about, and try to gently point it out to the queens.”
Perched near them, Balm said, wryly, “It helps if they listen to the warriors, too.”
“Of course,” Chime said, as if that was self-evident. Then ruined it by adding, “But warriors’ concerns are too frivolous to worry about.”
Balm eyed him. “So who cares what warriors think?” Balm was Jade’s clutchmate, one of the female warriors sometimes born to queen’s clutches. Having been a warrior all her life, her perspective was somewhat different than Chime’s.
Moon rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the platform, feeling the conversation had gone off on a tangent that would make it difficult if not impossible to return to the original subject. The afternoon was warm and the air so damp it might as well be raining, the light dim through cloud cover somewhere high above the leafy canopy. From the branch they had a view across to the platform about two hundred paces below, where the Arbora hunted.
It was a huge surface, spiraling halfway around the enormous bulk of a mountain-tree, heavily forested with a stream of runoff falling down onto the smaller platforms nestled in the branches below it. Moon could catch occasional flashes of color from the Arbora’s scales as they climbed and leapt among the thick greenery. Arbora might be smaller than Aeriat and lack wings, but in their shifted forms they were scaled and powerfully muscled, and their teeth and claws were just as sharp. Unfortunately, the suspended forest was just as rife with predators as it was with grasseaters.
Moon wasn’t as worried about the forested hunting ground as he was the platform directly below it. It was overshadowed and overgrown with bulbous white vines with dark purple leaves, concealed by drifts of mist. What little he could see looked dangerous and Moon thought all it needed were piles of bones along its rotting edges.
Balm was saying, “If you don’t listen to the warriors it just causes more problems with the young males—”
Chime snorted in a derisive way that was an invitation for Balm to hit him. “Warriors complain a lot. Much more than Arbora. If you listen to them you wouldn’t have time for—”
“All you people complain more than anybody else I’ve ever met,” Moon said, “with less reason.” He had t
ried to keep his opinions on running the court to himself, because there was nothing he knew less about than managing a Raksuran colony. And he thought Jade did a good job of keeping an eye on the Arbora and the warriors. He had no intention of butting in and causing trouble by repeating “concerns” unless he knew a lot more about the situation.
Chime stiffened in offense, but Balm laughed. “It’s probably true.”
Moon nudged his shoulder against Chime’s. “It was a joke.”
“It was not.” But Chime settled his ruffled spines anyway. “Oh, speaking of complaining, there was something I wanted to let you know. I heard some of the others talking: they’re worried that Stone won’t come back.”
Moon frowned, startled. “Why wouldn’t he come back?”
Balm said, “He’s been gone a lot over the last twenty turns or so. He was gone more than he was at the old colony.” She shrugged her folded wings, her expression thoughtful. “I don’t know, but I think that was one of the reasons things got so bad. For example, if he was there, I don’t think Pearl would have sent Dust and Burn off to other courts.”
Moon didn’t comment. Dust and Burn were the young consorts who had belonged to Amber, the sister queen who had died before Moon had come to the court. If they had still been there, Jade would have been able to take one of them and there would have been no need for Stone to go on the trip to Star Aster to ask for a consort, which had led him to find Moon.
“So, since we’re settled here now, there’s been some talk that he might leave again,” Chime finished. He turned to Moon, his brow scrunched in worry. “What do you think?”