The Cloud Roads (31 page)

Then Jade suddenly twitched, her spines flaring in alarm, and shifted to Arbora. An instant later, Moon’s claws vanished and he was suddenly in groundling form. He swallowed back a yell, dropping to a crouch to keep from falling. On the platform above him, Song and Vine landed awkwardly, and Chime crashed into a sleeping basket; they all shifted into groundling form. Moon tried to shift back to Raksura, just in case it was still possible. He felt a pressure in his chest, behind his eyes, and nothing happened.
This is almost as bad as the poison,
he thought, shoving to his feet. At least he still had his clothes, and the long bone javelin borrowed from the hunters.

Jade shook herself, recovering from the shock, and ducked forward into the doorway the dakti had come through. Moon jumped down behind her.

In the big chamber, the cluster of startled dakti leapt up, hissing, to charge at them. Jade blocked the doorway, and the dakti hesitated, unwilling to attack a Raksuran queen even in Arbora form. One conquered its fear enough to lunge at her, and Moon dropped into a crouch, leaning under her arm to stab at it with the javelin. It jerked back, shrieking, but he didn’t think he had hurt it.
Oh, we could be in trouble here,
Moon thought, ducking away from the creature’s flailing claws as Jade held the others off. Fighting Fell as a groundling was going to be even less fun than it had always looked.

One dakti bounced up to the window above the ledge, flinging itself through into the stairwell and into Song and Chime. Song grabbed its wing and jumped off the platform onto the steps, using her groundling weight to yank the creature out of the air. Chime scrambled after her, swinging at it with his javelin. Vine grabbed a loose stone from a platform and whacked it in the head.

That only took three of us,
Moon thought sourly, as Sand braced himself at the window to try to repel the other dakti.
This isn’t going to work.

Then Pearl and the other Aeriat burst in through the doorway on the opposite side of the chamber. The dakti scattered to face the new threat. Pearl pounced on one, ripping its head off, and River hooked one down out of the air. A heartbeat later, all the Aeriat were suddenly groundlings. River staggered and nearly fell; Root, in mid-leap, did fall. Moon looked at the wingless dakti, and saw it staring intently at Pearl, just as she shifted to Arbora.

“It is that thing; it’s doing this,” he told Jade.

“Get it,” Jade snarled to Moon, and dove through the doorway. Chime and the others followed her, and Moon used the distraction to head for the strange dakti.

Even as an Arbora, Pearl didn’t hesitate, bounding forward to slam another dakti into the wall. Jade lunged in to pull a dakti off Root, and Moon dodged around the fight.

The strange creature saw him coming and ran, scampering up the steps to the platform. Moon bolted after it. The creature scrambled away from him, huddling in on itself. It moaned and lifted its head, and he stepped back abruptly, feeling a cold chill. Its eyes had an avid expression completely at odds with its terrified posture.

Then it lunged at him. Moon swung the javelin like a club, slamming it across the creature’s head. He dodged a wild blow as it fell across the steps, then slammed the point into its chest.

Its scales resisted the sharpened bone, and Moon leaned all his weight on it to drive it in. Gurgling, the creature clawed at him, tearing at his shirt and scratching his arms as he grimly forced the javelin further into its chest.

Vine ran up, grabbed the upper part of the javelin, and threw his weight on it as well. Moon felt the creature’s scales give way with a crack. Dark blood gushed from the wound. Moon saw the intelligence fade from the creature’s eyes, leaving them blank and gray.

The pressure in his chest lifted so abruptly that Moon stumbled down the steps. In relief, he shifted back to Raksura. Vine stepped back and shifted too, calling to the others, “That’s it! We can shift!”

Bloody and ragged from the brief fight, the others all shifted and pounced on the last of the confused dakti before they could flee.

As the last of the dakti died, Jade shifted to her winged form and jumped up to the platform to land beside Moon. She said, “Song, Vine, go out and signal the Arbora.” The plan was for the Arbora to climb up the outside of the colony, gather here, and then they would all fight their way down through the structure together.

As Vine turned to leap for the skylight, Jade moved forward, staring down at the strange dakti. “This has to be the thing Flower saw, but what is it?”

The others gathered around as Pearl stepped up onto the platform. She circled the dead creature, her lips curling in disgust. “A new kind of Fell? It looks oddly like an Arbora.”

Chime reached down toward it. Then his spines flared and he jerked his hand back. Sounding sick, he said, “It’s a mentor.”

Jade shook her head, staring at him. “It can’t be. It looks—”

“Like a Fell. I think it’s a crossbreed, part Fell, part Raksura.” Chime’s face was bleak. “They weren’t lying when they said they wanted to join with us.”

Moon looked down at the thing, appalled. He had been hoping that the “joining” was just a Fell lie. Root eased forward to sniff at the creature; Sand grabbed his spines, dragging him back.

Chime continued, “They must have done it before. Captured Arbora, forced them to mate with rulers, until they produced a mentor.” He waved a hand frantically. “They didn’t need a Fell in the colony to see us through its eyes. This thing could see us because it was part of us. Not our court, not our bloodline, but still Raksura, still a mentor.”

The others stirred uneasily. Pearl hissed, sounding more angry than anything else. “How did it force us to shift? That’s a queen’s power, not a mentor’s. And even another Raksuran queen couldn’t force Jade and I to shift, no matter how old or powerful she was.”

Chime shook his head, baffled. “Because it’s a crossbreed? I don’t know. It had to know we were there before it could force us to shift, though. That’s like a queen’s power.”

“It sees through the other dakti,” Moon said, the realization turning his blood cold. “When that one saw us in the stairwell—”

“This creature knew we were there,” Jade finished. She gave the mentor-dakti a kick with one clawed foot, as if she had to suppress the urge to tear the body apart. “That must be how it forced the court to shift. The kethel dropped the dakti on the colony, they ran through, finding everyone, and this creature used its power on them.”

“We just have to hope it’s the only one,” Moon said, and looked up to see everyone staring at him. “Well, we do,” he added defensively.

Song and Vine leapt back in through the skylight overhead. A moment later Bone, Flower, and the other Arbora swarmed in through the doorways. A few of the hunters carried extra waterskins filled with poison.

Still in her Arbora form, Flower climbed up to the platform to stand beside Chime, staring down at the dead crossbreed.

“It’s worse than you thought,” Chime told her. Flower hissed and crouched to poke at the creature.

The other Arbora gathered around the platform, watching Pearl. Pearl’s spines flared, and she said, “Work your way down. Kill them all. Find our court.”

Bone growled, and the hunters turned nearly as one, flowing toward the doorway out to the big central stairwell. Moon leapt over their heads to land in front, beating Bone down the passage and diving down the stairs.

The Arbora bounded after him, climbing along the walls and ceiling. Moon met a dakti, surprising it as he whipped around a corner onto a landing. He tore its head off before it could scream. The stairs divided at this point, splitting off into a wide passage that led to more Aeriat bowers and then a second stairwell. Jade leapt down to land beside him, just as Bone caught up to them. She said, “We’ll take the other side.”

Moon nodded. They had to move fast. “Look for the kethel.”

Jade turned for the passage, hissing for the Aeriat to follow her. They flashed by in a multi-colored swarm of wings and tails. Moon turned down the stairs with Bone and the hunters.

They reached the next landing down, where three passages split off. One led forward into the pyramid’s central shaft, another led to the right, turning narrow, concealing the room it opened into. Moon heard the bubble of fountains and, over the sick stench of Fell, he caught the scent of the poison. And a faint sound of movement, something like hissing, breathing.

He went down the right hand passage in a bound, the hunters right behind him. The doorway at the end opened into a long chamber with an open-roofed court in the center. It was full of dead and dying dakti.

They sprawled everywhere, smaller and shriveled in death. Chunks of bloody meat, already attracting buzzing insects, lay among them.
Kethel meat,
Moon thought, with some satisfaction.
That’s what they get for eating each other.
The stench was unbelievable.

Behind him, a startled hunter asked, “Is that one of us?” In the nearest pile of dakti was a body, no scales, the naked skin light-colored but mottled with green and black. The hunter reached down for it, meaning to pull it away from the pile.

Moon lunged in and grabbed his arm before he could touch it. “No, it’s a dakti!”

“He’s right.” Bone shoved forward, giving the white form a kick. “That’s the dakti’s other form. Like our groundling forms, but—” The shifted dakti writhed away from him, unable to stand but still snarling defiance, barring fangs. It had harsh features, flat empty eyes, dark hair matted and ragged.“—not much like.” Bone disemboweled the creature with one swipe of his claws.

Someone in the back said, “It’s killing them, not just making them sleep like it did Strike. And why did only one of them shift?”

“Only one so far,” someone else answered. “Maybe that one got less than the others.”

“Flower always did make strong simples,” Bone said, turning away from the dying dakti. “And there’s power in anything made by a mentor.”

It’s probably lucky we didn’t kill Strike,
Moon thought. But then Flower hadn’t been thinking about killing Raksura when she brewed the poison. “Keep moving.” He turned back to the passage.

Out in the stairwell he saw flashes of gold, copper, and blue as Aeriat dropped through the central well; a moment later dakti screamed in chorus. Moon snarled, wanting to join the fight, but he kept to Jade’s instructions and led the way down the stairs to the next level.

This was the fourth level up from the river terraces, and the landing led to several doorways and passages. Moving rapidly from one to the other, Moon found nothing but empty rooms with storage baskets and cushions tumbled around, smashed pottery, and broken tools.

Then with a little cry of horror, a hunter jerked back from a doorway. Moon leapt forward and grabbed the hunter’s spines to drag him out of the way, expecting a flood of dakti or the missing kethel. But the room was empty, except for bundles strewn across the floor.

Then he saw the bodies, some wrapped in blood-stained clothing.

He stepped inside, feeling the dirty floor grit under his claws. Arbora started to push in after him, and he snarled, “Stay out there!” It could be a trap. The room was empty except for the corpses, the carved figures of the ancient groundlings staring dispassionately down from the stone beams. There were no other doorways, but the dakti could swarm in through the air shafts.

The Arbora scrambled back, obeying without argument. Moon moved forward, tasting the air, but all he could smell was Fell and death.
We’re too late,
he thought, sick at heart. He knew there was nothing he could have done; he and Jade had returned as fast as they could.
And the Fell didn’t come to Indigo Cloud for you,
he reminded himself. That didn’t help.

But as he stepped further into the room, he saw this death wasn’t new. From the smell of rot, these people must have died days ago, not long after the colony had been taken. There were at least forty or fifty bodies, mostly Arbora, male and female, and a few taller, slimmer shapes that had to be Aeriat. Most were in groundling form, only a few in Raksuran. All were twisted and broken, skin or hide slashed by claws. He heard a step behind him and glanced back, baring his fangs, but it was Bone. The other hunters still held the stairwell.

Moon looked back down at the bodies again and recognized a face. It was Shell, one of the soldiers who had tried to chase him out of the colony his first day here, when Chime had hurried to defend him. Shell was in groundling form, ripped from chin to crotch, his eyes still open. His hands were curled claw-like, dark residue caught under his fingernails, in his teeth.

Moon looked away.
The Fell didn’t eat them. But they ate the Raksura at Sky Copper.
He had a very vivid recollection of the dakti with the arm clutched in its jaws. And Stone had found few intact bodies when he had searched the mound.
It doesn’t make sense.

Bone circled the rows of bodies. His voice thick with misery, he said, “These are mostly soldiers. They must have fought.” Then he froze, looking down, hissing in dismay.

Moon moved to his side, and found himself staring down at Petal’s face. She was in her groundling form, gray and rigid in death.

He looked up. Bone’s spines rippled in fury.

“We’re wasting time,” Moon said, and turned for the doorway.

On the next level down they found a score of dakti trying to flee down a passage, flushed out of hiding by the Aeriat on the other side of the building. Moon helped corner them, then let the Arbora thoroughly tear them apart before he made them head down the stairs again.

On the level below, Moon hissed for silence. He could hear something below, a flurry of movement, hissing. He took the last turn, coming down to where the stairs ended in a junction of two large passages. One led out to a big room with an opening to the outside, letting in cool air. But he sensed movement down the left hand passage, a lot of movement.

“That’s the soldiers and hunters’ bowers,” Bone whispered.