by Martha Wells
“That’s true,” Chime admitted, still shivering. “But—”
Moon lost the rest because of what he was seeing outside the window. Jade leaned over to look and gasped in amazement.
They had passed out of the dark water of the cavern and into sunlit blue-green depths. They must be traveling down the outside of the island, with the rocky cliffs that concealed the cavern above them. But light shone from the rock itself.
It was studded with round or oblong windows set into the shapes of pointed arches, or curved towers topped with domes. It was a city, carved into the rock roots of the island. A living city. Moon hissed in awe.
“A sea kingdom,” Jade whispered. Then more uncertainly, “Is it?”
“I don’t see any sealings.” Moon couldn’t take his eyes off the city. Chime pressed against his side and Moon moved back a little so he could get a better view. “I always thought sea kingdom cities would be more… open, more spread out. This looks like it’s all enclosed.” As if it was designed for people who couldn’t breathe water.
“Why would groundlings build this?” Jade said, then answered her own question. “Unless they wanted a city completely safe from the Fell.”
Lost in wonder, Chime murmured, “It has been, until now.”
Or something worse than the Fell, Moon thought.
The hut drew closer to the city, or the rock base of the island sloped outwards toward them. They passed a long curved gallery with large windows, but Moon didn’t glimpse any movement inside. Light glowed up from below, and the hut sank into a stone shaft. The water dimmed from blue-green to a deeper blue, then suddenly bubbled and frothed. Moon felt his ears pop.
The hut jerked suddenly. Moon grabbed Jade’s arm in reflex and Chime grabbed his. In instinctive reassurance, Jade said, “Easy, it’s all right,” but her spines were twitching.
The water suddenly vanished from the window and Moon glimpsed a rounded light-colored wall, lit by a dim blue-white glow. The wall had folds and sinuous curves, like fabric, or an intricate flower. Then the hut landed hard with a hollow thump and the shock made them stagger.
Moon peered out the window. “I think we’re there.” He flinched at movement outside the hut, but it was Lithe, waving to him. “We’re definitely there.”
Jade turned to the door and twisted the handle. The seal around the door popped with released air and it swung open.
They climbed out into a large round chamber, the floor slick and wet, the air damp and smelling strongly of salt and distinct traces of Fell. The faint blue light came from polished jewels like sapphires set into the curving walls, but much of the place was in shadow.
Malachite stood a few paces from her hut, which sat in a puddle of water. She glanced pointedly at Moon, then gave Jade a dark look. She must blame Jade for bringing Moon, not that anybody would have been able to stop anybody else from coming down here, with several huts still working. Jade ignored her.
Chime stared around, then looked up and gasped.
Lithe nodded in agreement. “It’s amazing.”
Moon and Jade followed his gaze, and it was their turn to gasp.
At the top of the chamber, some fifty paces above their heads, water hung suspended, rippling faintly. A curious fish passed in a glimmer of silver. It was like looking up into a giant bowl filled with water.
Chime whispered, “Whoever built this place had powerful magic.”
Lithe said, “And it’s shaped like a flower. It’s like we’re standing at the bottom where the pollen is, and the petals are arching up around us. This must be what I saw when I tried to scry where we were going. From the outside, I bet it looks like the drawing I made.”
Moon pivoted. The floor was flat here where the huts had landed, but towards the center of the chamber it gently sloped down toward some sort of rounded carving. The walls around them arched up in fanfolds that formed multiple petals, up to the opening at the top where the invisible barrier held back the water. Moon felt his back teeth ache with tension. He had been to places where giant flowers ate people. While this one seemed to be constructed of stone or some smooth coral, the resemblance made his nerves itch.
“Look for where the Fell went,” Malachite ordered.
Jade headed for the far wall, and Moon managed to tear his gaze away from the water hanging above their heads. A short distance away, three more huts stood in drying puddles, metal surfaces still dripping with seawater, their doors open. But one hut had clearly been here much longer.
Chime bounced over to examine that one, but Moon stopped to look into the damp, recently-used huts. The Fell-stench was thick in all three. He had been hoping to see one of Shade’s copper disks, but there was nothing. He gave up, Moon thought. At least there was no sign of his body. The Fell must still believe they needed him.
He turned to the old hut. Chime crouched to look inside the open door and said, “Some of the groundlings didn’t make it out.” Moon looked and saw at least three bodies, now jumbled collections of bone, withered skin, and disintegrating fabric. They were all crammed into the back of the hut, as if they had huddled there before death. He couldn’t tell what kind of groundling they had been. The skulls looked somewhat spade-shaped, but without hair or skin it was impossible to identify them.
Chime poked at the scatter of bones, then at the rusted tools lying on the floor. He picked one up, a long bar with a flat end. “I wonder what this is for. Prying something up, maybe?”
Moon circled the hut and looked up at the chain. It was wrapped by the withered remnants of the air-vine, which must have rotted off the main plant at some point. But the chain didn’t look damaged or broken.
Chime frowned, clearly thinking along the same lines as Moon. He said, “Why didn’t they leave?”
“Something got into the hut and killed them before they could seal the door,” Moon said.
Chime’s spines shivered. “So… there’s something here besides the Fell.”
Moon had thought that was a given from the beginning.
Lithe called out, “I think we found the way out!”
Chapter Twenty
Lithe, Malachite, and Jade stood on the slope above the carved flower at the center of the chamber. Moon approached cautiously, but there was something about the slope that made it easy for his foot-claws to keep traction. It looked slanted, but felt like an even surface.
The flower stood a few paces high, made of the same smooth material as the walls and floor. The petals folded into a rounded cone, with only a small opening at the top. If there was a door in it, like there had been in Lithe’s drawing, it was hidden inside.
“There’s no other door in this chamber,” Jade told him. “If there’s a way into the rest of the city, it has to be this thing.”
Malachite circled it. “Flowers open.”
“Have you tried poking it?” Chime asked.
“Yes,” Lithe said, sounding frustrated. She crouched and ran her hand down the petals, trying to work her claws into the folds between them. “But maybe this is what the Fell needed Shade for. Maybe it will only open for a crossbreed consort. I’m obviously not crossbred enough.”
“Except the groundlings opened it,” Moon pointed out. “They didn’t build all these things to get down here, see the flower was closed, and then run off in a panic. And some of them are dead in that hut.”
“If they didn’t open it, something might have come out, or opened it from the inside,” Jade said.
Malachite leaned down to the flower suddenly, her face almost against the white stone petals. She tasted the air so deeply, Moon heard the rattle of her breath. “Careful,” he said, part of his mind still on flowers that ate people.
She stood. “The Fell touched this, and so did Shade.”
Chime was still lost in thought. “So maybe it did open for Shade because he’s the right kind of crossbreed, but that won’t help us. But let’s say the groundlings did open it, and do what they would have done.” He sprang away from the flower and l
oped back toward the old hut.
Malachite frowned after him, but didn’t object. Lithe said, “I think I know what he means.” She leaned over the flower, bracing herself on the outer petals, and peered down the narrow opening at the top. She shifted to her groundling form to pull a bead off her bracelet. Concentrating for a moment, she made the bead give off a faint glow of light. Then she dropped it into the flower opening.
Moon and Jade bumped into each other trying to see, so Malachite got there first. “Clever,” she told Lithe. “There is a small slot in the bottom.”
Chime returned with the tool he had found in the groundling hut, the long bar with the flat end. He said, “This tool didn’t look like it was for working on anything in the hut.” He braced himself on the flower, and Lithe moved to give him room. She shifted back to her scaled form, which Moon thought was a sensible precaution.
Chime carefully slipped the bar down through the gap in the top of the flower. “It fits, that’s a good sign,” he muttered. “I’m just going to tap the opening… There.”
The flower petals started to rotate and unfold. Moon grabbed Chime by the spines and pulled him away as the flower opened almost under his feet.
Lithe’s glowing bead clattered down to bounce off a ramp shaped like a vine with wide leaves. It was built into a wide shaft lit by more of the blue glowing stones. The ramp spiraled down for two turns then headed out of sight towards the interior of the city. Moon took a deep taste of the air, and caught more traces of Fell stench and a sweet scent that seemed to come from the flower itself.
Malachite said, “Bring the groundling tool,” and dropped down into the opening. Without hesitation, Lithe jumped after her.
Jade growled in irritation. “It’s going to close behind us. We don’t know if the tool will open it from below.”
“The groundlings got out,” Chime said, though he looked doubtful. He shifted to his groundling form, tucked the tool though his belt, and shifted back.
Moon had come this far and wasn’t stopping now. “We’ll have Shade with us on the way out.”
Jade muttered, “I hope so,” and leapt down. Moon followed her, with a nervous Chime behind him.
Malachite and Lithe were already moving down the ramp fast but cautiously. Even though he had been expecting it, Moon winced as the flower rotated shut above them. Jade growled again and started after Malachite.
Moon bounded down the ramp to catch up. The floor material felt oddly soft under his claws. Plants grew across the walls, white mounds of petals like the air plant up in the cave. These might be air plants too, collecting air from vines that reached all the way up through the island to the surface. He thought he could hear something very distant, a faint echo of sound. He whispered to Malachite, “Can you hear anything?” A queen as old as Malachite should have more acute senses, like Stone did.
“Voices,” she replied. “Fell voices. Somewhere ahead, and perhaps below us.”
At the bottom of the ramp the walkway opened up into a bridge over a large hall. Long, thin crystalline windows looked out into the deep blue of the sea in the curved wall to their right. On the opposite side was a series of arched halls with slender pillars carved into the shapes of drifting seaweed. In this strange light the soft coral-like material of the walls was touched with faint, pearlescent colors, blues, greens. And the air currents flowed from every direction; Fell stench was everywhere, with no way to tell where it came from.
Malachite snarled silently in frustration and slowly pivoted, tasting the air. The distant voices had ceased. Moon went to the edge of the bridge with the others, looking for clues. The floors seemed unmarked by any tracks, but these halls were big enough to fly through. Large round doorways dotted the interior walls with leaf-shaped platforms below some of them, but no sign of stairs or ladders. Groundlings couldn’t get far into this place without ropes and grappling hooks, he thought. But the Fell and Shade would have no trouble at all and could have gone anywhere. “We’re so close,” he said to himself.
“We’ll find him.” Jade paced down the walkway, her gaze on the open halls. “We’ll hear them, or—or follow the trail of dead groundlings.”
“What?” Malachite whipped around. Jade pointed a claw toward a small heap of bones and rotted fabric that lay at the mouth of the farthest hall.
Jade said, “If these groundlings fled from whatever it is the Fell are looking for—”
Malachite sprang off the bridge and snapped out her wings, two strong flaps carrying her across the space. Jade grimaced at Moon and leapt after her.
Chime paused to pick up Lithe, and he and Moon sprang into flight.
They landed at the top of the hall, near the groundling’s corpse. The body was stretched out, its spaded skull lying on its side, skeletal arms outstretched. Moon didn’t see any reason why it should be dead. He looked up, but there was no platform or doorway above that it could have fallen out of. It was like something had struck it from behind and flattened it. Beyond the body, the hall stretched out ahead for about a hundred paces, then curved out of sight.
Malachite glanced over the body, then started down the hall. But Chime said, “Wait.”
Moon looked at him and saw his spines trembled. Chime said, “I just heard the voice again. It’s much clearer this time. It’s saying ‘I’ll give you the… something. Teach you power.’” Chime’s whole body shuddered, as if trying to shake off the words. “This is very creepy.”
“At least we know we’re on the right trail,” Lithe said, looking uneasily ahead.
Malachite just started down the hall, but this time she was at least moving more slowly.
They made their way through a series of turns that could have been confusing except for the three other dead groundlings they found to point the way. One hall had a long window to the outside, revealing a few rocky underwater peaks and some drifting semi-transparent creatures like flowers with fins. Close up Moon could see the crystalline substance wasn’t as clear as it looked. It was shot through with hundreds of nearly translucent fibers, like a root system. He paused long enough to lay his hand on the crystal, then jerked back. The material felt weirdly warm and alive and rippled faintly under his touch. Chime watched, wide-eyed, and murmured, “This place is even stranger than it looks.”
As they reached another curving hall, Moon heard a voice and felt his spines flick involuntarily as he recognized the progenitor. He didn’t need to tell Malachite that there were Fell somewhere ahead. She slowed and dropped into a crouch.
At the end of the hall was a round doorway looking down into another large chamber. It had more of the narrow crystalline windows streaking the outer wall. All the curves in their path had taken them some distance down and around. Moon thought they were on the side of the island facing away from shore.
As they edged closer, Moon got a view of the floor of the chamber, some fifty or so paces below. He saw the progenitor and Thedes and four other rulers, and he saw Shade, but the thing they faced captured his gaze so thoroughly all he could do was stare.
In the center of the chamber was something like the bulb of the giant version of a sea-flower, that stood nearly forty paces high. It sat on a nest of vines, some dark and pulsing, others withered and dead. The big white petals at the front had been pulled down, allowing a view of the interior. It was filled with the multitude of writhing stems that in a small sea-flower caught tiny water creatures as prey. This one had prey, too.
The creature caught inside it was big, as large as Stone’s shifted form. But it looked like Shade, like the image in the crystal piece the Fell had shown them. The same dark scales, the armored crest and huge mane of spines.
Malachite drew back from the doorway and so forgot herself as to exchange a look with Jade.
Lithe and Chime stared wide-eyed. Jade whispered what they were all thinking, “Can that really be an ancestor of us and the Fell?”
Malachite shook her head, but it was a gesture of grim realization, not denial. “But why is
it here?”
Moon had to ask, “Why would our ancestors live underwater?”
“They wouldn’t.” Jade risked another peek. “Maybe this… ancestor was captured by the species who lived here, and left behind when they died.”
Moon didn’t buy that. “This place is designed for things that fly. We haven’t seen any stairs, anywhere.”
Chime nodded. “And there are these jewel lights, and all these flowers bringing air down here. They make me think of the flower lights in Emerald Twilight.”
Moon thought Chime was onto something. This place was strange, but maybe not entirely unfamiliar. “They do whole trees at Opal Night.”
Lithe said, “That’s just an ordinary mentor’s skill. At least, it is here in the Reaches. It’s been passed down forever.”
And everyone believed that mentors got their abilities from interbreeding with consorts. Moon thought, And Stone said it was the Arbora who made the seeds to transform mountain-trees into colony trees. Maybe this place had been transformed out of the rock of the island itself, with their ancestors’ equivalent of mentors’ magic.
Chime said, “But if our ancestors did build this place, who’s been renewing the spells?”
Lithe looked up at the nearest air plant, spread across the ceiling of the chamber. “Maybe they don’t need to be renewed. Maybe they’re just that powerful.”
The scales of Jade’s brow furrowed as she reconsidered. “They might have had a good reason for building it underwater. To hide something, maybe. Or hide from something.”
Lithe said, “The flower has to be magically sustaining that… person. So he was trapped inside it, all this time?”
Chime seemed uneasily fascinated by the scene below. “He must have called those groundlings to him somehow. Maybe their boat came too close.”
Lithe bounced, excited at unraveling the mystery. “But then the groundlings couldn’t let him out, because only one of his own species, or someone who was close to that species, like a Fell-Raksura crossbreed, can open the trap. Then something happened, and the groundlings fled.”