The Serpent Sea

by Martha Wells

  “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 anybody 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 w
ood 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.

  Stone took a passage toward the interior, flowing down it like a dark cloud. His tail whipped back and forth, and Moon hung back to avoid being struck.

  Then Stone stopped abruptly in front of a large hollow in the wall. Moon slid to a halt and backed up hastily, out of tail range, just in case Stone hadn’t wanted to be followed. But Stone shifted to groundling, and stepped forward into the hollow.

  Now that the bulk of Stone’s other form wasn’t blocking the way, Moon saw there was a plaque at the back of the hollow, large enough to be covering a doorway, with a carving of intertwined branches with leaves and fruit. “The bolts are broken,” Stone said, and touched the carving.

  As the others caught up, Moon shifted to groundling and stepped forward to look. Broken pieces from the side of the plaque lay on the floor near the wall, as if they had been kicked out of the way. He hissed under his breath, the realization making him cold. Like the carving in the stairwell. Like the broken bins and jars. He looked at Stone, whose face was still with suppressed fury. Someone’s been here before us.

  From behind them, Pearl said harshly, “Stone, what is this? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Stone shoved at the plaque, and with a raw creak it swung open, revealing a dark opening. It released the strong scent of stale air laced with a faint sweetness. Stone snarled and stepped inside. “Flower, make a light!”

  Flower hurried forward, lifting the spelled rock she had used to examine the rotting wall. Moon moved aside for her, and she slipped through the doorway after Stone.

  The light revealed an oval chamber, the walls rough and unworked, just dark, warm wood. There were no light-shells mounted anywhere either, as if no one was meant to be in here. Then Moon looked down at the floor. It was covered with white tendrils, like the exposed roots of a plant. The resemblance to something that lay in wait on the ground to whip up and grab unsuspecting passers-by made Moon jerk back, and he bumped into Jade.

  She took his shoulders and moved him aside, and said quietly, “Stone, talk to us. What is it?”

  Stone hissed, passing a hand over his face. “Someone’s been in here and taken the seed. It should be there, in the cradle.”

  Moon craned his neck to look. In the center of the tendrils was an empty space, round, not much bigger than a melon. The tendrils around it were cut and had turned dark with rot. Stone continued, “The seed is what changes an ordinary mountain-tree into a colony tree, that lets the Arbora shape the tree and change it. Without it, the tree is rotting from the inside out.”

  For a stretched moment the room was silent. He said something was wrong, Moon thought. Up in the consorts’ bowers yesterday, Stone had been uneasy. Not because of old memories, or seeing the place in this empty state after so long away. Because the tree itself must have felt different, wrong.

  Flower groaned under her breath. River twitched uneasily and looked at Pearl, who stood like a statue. Then Jade let out her breath in a low hiss. She said, “Can you tell how long it’s been gone?”

  Stone scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. “No. I’m not a mentor.”

  Everyone looked at Flower, who lifted a hand helplessly. “I’ll have to look through our histories. I’ve never even seen a mountain-tree before, and I can’t augur the past.”

  “They wouldn’t have taken it with them?” Jade persisted. “The court, Indigo and Cloud, when they left?”

  “No.” Stone sounded certain about that. “There’s no other use for it, and it has to stay with the colony tree, or the tree dies.” He looked at her, his gaze sharp. “It can’t have been missing long. I came here two turns ago, to make sure nothing had happened, that the tree was still livable. It didn’t feel wrong then. And I think the blight would be worse if the seed had been gone for turns and turns.”

  “It could be worse.” Chime sounded sick. “We haven’t had a chance to look at the roots yet.”

  Everyone stared at him, and River growled.

  “What did the seed look like?” Moon asked. Everyone turned to him, and he clarified, “Is it covered with jewels or metal? Is there any reason to steal it besides making another colony tree?” He was wondering if other Raksura had taken it, though that didn’t make much sense. Why take a seed to make a colony tree when there was a perfectly good colony tree, uninhabited and ready to occupy, right here?

  “No, it looks like a seed,” Stone said. “Like it’s made of wood.”

  “It must be a powerful artifact, though.” Flower bit her lip as she leaned down to touch one of the cut tendrils. “There are many magics something like that might be used for.”

  Moon stirred uneasily. Like the way the Golden Islanders used the rock from inside flying islands to make their boats fly. That wasn’t a pleasant thought. If someone had stolen the thing for magic, it could have been cut to pieces, destroyed, anything.

  “Maybe they stole other things.” Chime turned to the others. “We saw a carving that was damaged where the inlay had been pried out. Whoever did this must have passed that way.”

  Jade nodded, her expression grim. “We’ve seen other things broken, in ways that didn’t make sense. As if someone was searching.”

  Moon added, “They didn’t get as far up as the Aeriat levels. The stones are still in the carvings there.” The inlay was all up and down the main stairwell; the intruders couldn’t have missed it.

  Stone’s eyes narrowed. “If they left other signs they were here—”

  Pearl snarled suddenly, furious, and the sound echoed off the walls. Everyone but Stone twitched, and even he barred his teeth. Her voice a growl, she said, “These thieves left a trail! Find it!”

  

  The trail might be old, but last night the hunters had been looking for predator scat and traces of recent occupation, not signs tha
t intruders had searched the tree within the past couple of turns. Now that they knew what they were looking for, it wasn’t hard to find.

  There wasn’t enough dirt or moss on most of the floors to show tracks, but on the level below, off a main stairwell, two hunters reported finding a room with more smashed storage jars. Others found several more carvings, on passage walls and the pillars supporting a lower stairwell, where inlaid stones had been pried out. “They were in a hurry,” Moon told Jade as they climbed down the well in the Arbora levels. “They could have checked every carving in the tree for inlay, but they didn’t.”

  “It’s as if they knew exactly what they wanted, and didn’t waste any time once they found it,” she agreed grimly, and swung down onto the next balcony.

  The trail led to a level far below the Arbora’s workrooms and the storerooms. This part of the tree had smaller passages and wells, narrower stairs woven through and around thick folds of wood. The floors were lumpy and the walls had been left rough and undecorated. Moon and Jade followed a passage toward the tree’s outer trunk, and found Knell and a group of soldiers and hunters there.

  As Stone and Pearl arrived, Knell said, “All the doors down here are sealed from the inside, so the hunters assumed no one had used them since the court left.” He ran his thumb along the seam where the door met the wall. “But the other doors have a thick crust here, hard as rock, from turns of wind and rain forcing dirt through the cracks from the outside.” He glanced up. “This one doesn’t.”

  Pearl hissed. “Open it.”

  “Wait.” Stone frowned at the door. “Let the Aeriat scout it from the outside first.”

  Jade regarded him doubtfully. “You don’t think whatever took the seed is still out there?”

  “I don’t know what I think.” Stone’s voice was dry. “I just know I’m against the idea of opening any convenient passages to the ground at the moment.”