The Siren Depths (41 page)

Shade looked at Moon, startled. Then he turned for the way out. Moon pushed to his feet to follow. His spines twitched involuntarily, but no one tried to stop him.

The interior was confusing without a guide, but they managed to make their way up through the dark maze to the entrance. Dakti clung to the walls and ceilings, watching them with glittering eyes, chittering to each other. A kethel in groundling form stood near the ladder, grinning at them. Shade hissed at it and it backed away enough that they could scramble up and out.

There was movement everywhere as they fled back to the boat, as if all the Fell inside the sac were aware of them. The shadows seemed full of motion, and Moon looked up, trying to see where it came from. The sun had changed angles, and the dark outline of one of the kethel outside was visible through the gelatinous material of the sac, its wings moving rhythmically.

They landed on the deck of the boat, and an instant later Floret and Saffron burst up out of the belowdecks hatch. Moon hissed in relief and made a sharp gesture for them to get below again. At least the Fell hadn’t attacked the others on the boat.

As the warriors retreated, Shade said in a choked voice, “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Moon tried to think of a way to say thank you and everything seemed inadequate. He felt like he had failed Shade badly, that he should have prevented it from happening, thought of something to say to stop it. “We got out alive because of you.”

Shade’s spines flattened in distress. “Did they really think… doing that would make me one of them—” Then he started and hissed, “Kethel!”

Moon sensed movement behind him an instant later but he was already diving for the hatch with Shade. They scrambled down the steps, with Floret and Saffron just ahead, as the kethel landed on the deck and the ship rocked and creaked under its weight. At the bottom of the stairs, Moon stopped, braced for an attack.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the kethel moved around and settled on the deck, making the ship list a little to one side. Moon listened, but all he could hear was deep breathing.

“Guarding us?” Floret whispered.

Moon nodded, and eased away from the stairs. Shade reached up and slid the hatch closed. The light wood wouldn’t even slow the kethel down, but Moon didn’t tell him not to bother. That useless barrier between them and the creature was better than nothing.

Floret looked from Moon to Shade and asked, “You’re all right? They didn’t—”

“We’re fine.” Moon cut the question off quickly.

Shade shook his ruffled spines out. “Something happened in there. I mean, something other than—When the progenitor started to say how the guide knew about Opal Night, and they all went still, it was like something else came into the room. But I couldn’t see it. Did you notice that?”

“I saw them all listening to something we couldn’t hear.” If the Fell’s mysterious guide was something that could hide itself from sight, then they were even worse off than they had been before, if that was possible.

Saffron said, “Your warrior is claiming to hear things.”

Floret said in exasperation, “I told you, he used to be a mentor. He’s different.” She explained to Moon, “Chime heard something, like he did in the leviathan city.”

They stepped into the main cabin, and Moon found Lithe and Chime sitting on the floor. She stared into Chime’s eyes, and there was an odd stillness in his body. She must be looking into his mind to check for Fell influence.

Then Lithe leaned back and Chime blinked, a little disoriented as she released him. It was a sensation Moon was familiar with from when Flower had done this to him. She said, “I don’t see anything in there.”

Moon almost snorted with laughter, then realized he was a little hysterical. He sat down on the floor and shifted to groundling so he could bury his face in his hands for a moment.

When he looked up, everyone was staring worriedly at him. Chime sat in front of him, and Shade had shifted to groundling and crouched protectively at his side. Chime leaned in for a close look at Moon’s face. He asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Moon shook his head. “No. Lithe, you need to look into both of us too.”

“But they didn’t—” Shade stopped, frustrated. “If they did, we wouldn’t remember it, would we?”

They both sat while Lithe checked them for Fell influence. Lithe did Shade first, and after a long moment pronounced him free of any interference. Shade sighed in relief, and Moon felt the sick tightness in his chest ease. If the Fell hadn’t done it to Shade, then they hadn’t done it to Moon either. But he still wanted Lithe to check him, to make certain the others knew he wasn’t compromised.

Moon had the same trouble relaxing and letting Lithe in as he had with Flower. Once he managed it, it was over in what felt like an eye blink. Lithe gave him a quick smile, and said, “You’re fine, too.”

“Good.” Moon gave Shade a nudge with his elbow. “Tell them what the progenitor said, and that image they showed us. And about the thing you felt come into the room.”

He hoped he was getting across that Shade should leave out the part about what the Fell had made him do. With a guilty glance at Moon, Shade skipped over the feeding and told the others only about the guide the Fell had spoken of, the image the progenitor had shown them, and what he thought it meant.

When Shade reached the part about the presence he had sensed, Chime nodded grimly. He said, “I heard something while you were gone, a voice. I couldn’t understand what it said. I think it was speaking Raksuran, but I just couldn’t make out the words.” He nodded to Lithe. “That’s why I asked Lithe to look into my mind. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the Fell, trying to make me do something, somehow.”

“That’s not how it works, is it?” Saffron said. “They can’t take over your mind from a distance.”

“No, I know that.” Chime bared his teeth at her. “But—”

“But you’re different,” Moon supplied.

“Yes.” Chime twitched uneasily. “But she didn’t find anything.”

“I don’t understand how Chime used to be a mentor,” Shade said to Moon.

“Chime was born a mentor, at the old Indigo Cloud colony, but because the court was getting weaker, he changed into a warrior,” Moon told him.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Chime muttered, as Shade stared at him in surprise.

Moon continued, “He couldn’t do magic anymore or scry. But when we were looking for the seed from our mountain-tree, he heard a leviathan, out on the freshwater sea to the west of the Reaches. He could tell things about it that helped us.”

Shade considered that, biting his lower lip. He said to Chime, “So you can only sense things that are big, and very powerful?”

Chime slumped in resignation. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Moon rubbed his temple. His head ached, pain that seemed centered to either side of his nose, probably from the bad air and terrible scents. He still had dried blood on his chest and arms, and the Fell stench clung to his skin. But everyone else was in the same shape, and he didn’t want to waste water cleaning up. He asked Lithe, “Did you try to see if you could keep us from shifting?”

Lithe said, “I tried on Chime, but it didn’t work.” She lifted her hands in frustration. “Even if I could keep Raksura from shifting, I doubt I could do it to Fell. Queens being able to control our shifting is a Raksuran trait, not a Fell one.”

Everyone looked glum and discouraged and not particularly surprised. Moon had to admit that if Lithe had special powers from her crossbreed heritage, she probably would have noticed before now. He asked, “If progenitors can’t keep rulers from shifting, how do they control them?”

“That’s a good question,” Chime said. “I don’t think anyone knows the answer. Except maybe that dead scholar of predators that Delin knew.”

Moon just hoped Delin was still alive.
If Celadon and the others had escaped Aventera and reached the flying island where Jade, Stone, and Malachite waited…
He pushed the thought away. They couldn’t count on rescue.

Shade sat forward. “I think it’s the connection between them. Like our queens have with the court.” He turned to Moon. “The progenitor knew what Thedes had said to us.”

Moon had noticed that, too. “I’ve always thought the rulers were the ones who control the flight. I knew the crossbreed queen, Ranea, could make the rulers do things, even across long distances, but I thought that was just because she was a crossbreed.”

Chime’s expression suggested this wasn’t a pleasant thought. “Maybe it wasn’t just her ability; maybe it’s something all progenitors can do.”

Saffron had been listening to the conversation with her expression set in an impatient grimace. But she said, “Can the progenitor do it to us? Or try to do it? Maybe it was her voice that Chime heard.”

At least she sounded as if she was actually trying to help them figure things out. Moon asked Chime, “Was it?”

Chime lifted his hands in bafflement. “I don’t know.”

Lithe reached over and squeezed his wrist. “Just try to listen. You never know what might happen. I’m going to scry and see if I can tell where we’re going.”

* * *

Lithe retreated to another cabin for privacy, and Moon helped Chime and Shade check and care for the wounded. He had been in a healing sleep himself, but had never had to take care of someone in one. It was useful knowledge and he was glad to learn it; he just hoped he survived long enough for it to come in handy again.

After that, Moon spent the time making and discarding bad plans. There was just no way they could escape with the wounded, either on the boat or not, especially now that a major kethel seemed settled on the deck to stay. They might be able to set the sac or the progenitor’s nest on fire, but that wasn’t going to stop the kethel outside the sac from attacking them.

It was Shade the Fell really wanted. If they could get out of the sac and Moon could persuade Shade to run with the warriors and Lithe, while he stayed behind to distract the Fell… It wasn’t Moon’s favorite idea, considering what the Fell would do to him and the wounded before killing them. There was also the strong possibility that the warriors might not be able to fly fast enough to evade pursuit.

Moon’s sense of the sun’s passage told him it was setting now, somewhere outside the sac. They were still moving at what felt like the same speed, still toward the north. Moon hated feeling useless, so he went to the foodstores and took out some flatbread, fruit, and strips of dried cooked meat and fish. He divided it up, setting aside a share for Lithe, and made the others eat whether they liked it or not. They didn’t like it, but everyone seemed less edgy afterward.

Shade regarded his portion with a sickly expression. He said, “I don’t know if I can. Ever again.”

Moon took the dried meat and put it back in the basket. “Just the fruit and bread.”

Shade managed to choke it down with difficulty. Watching sympathetically, Chime said, “It’s the Fell stench. It’s making me sick too.”

Moon didn’t comment.

Saffron and Floret and Chime managed to settle who would take turns standing watch in the passage and who would sleep and when. Then Chime told Moon that Moon needed to sleep, that he was starting to say things that didn’t make sense. Rather than have the fight that had just been averted by the food, Moon stomped over to the far end of the cabin, flung himself down on a blanket and pretended to sleep.

After a short time, Shade came over with another blanket and settled down a few paces away, with a studied casualness that didn’t fool Moon for a moment. Moon patted the blanket next to him.

Shade didn’t hesitate, scooting over to curl up next to Moon. Moon put an arm around him and pulled him close. But he didn’t sleep for a long time, listening to Shade weep quietly against his chest.

* * *

Moon woke when he heard Lithe and Chime talking quietly. Shade was still curled up against his chest, breathing deeply. Moon eased away from him. When he stirred, Moon whispered, “Go back to sleep,” and Shade subsided.

He got to his feet and stepped quietly across the cabin. Floret had shifted to groundling, and slept sitting up against the wall near the doorway. Moon stopped to check the passage and saw Saffron perched midway up the steps, her attention on the deck above and the rhythmic breathing of their kethel guard.

Chime and Lithe sat near the wounded, with a piece of Delin’s pounded reed paper and one of his drawing sticks between them. Chime glanced up at Moon and said quietly, “Lithe saw something.”

Moon knew he meant the scrying. He sat down beside them, looking at the paper. Sketched on it was a flower, like a lily or a sea-flower, with a door in the center. Lithe said, “I saw trees clinging to cliffs, smelled saltwater and rock, heard waves crash. It makes sense; we’re still heading north, and there’s a salt sea several hundred ells to the north of the Aventerans’ plateau—or at least that’s what the court’s old histories say. There’s been no reason to go in this direction for turns.”

“What’s an ell?” Moon asked, still too half-asleep to care about exposing his lack of knowledge.

“It’s an Arbora walking measurement,” Chime said. “That would be… What, about fourteen days of warrior’s flight?”

“Something like that,” Lithe said. She rubbed her temple as if trying to coax more information out of it. “It’s been so long since I looked at the court’s maps. I suspect kethel fly much faster.”

“About three or four times as fast as a warrior. And they haven’t stopped to rest,” Moon said. They must be switching out, the shifted kethel carrying kethel in groundling form to take their places.

“So this door is somewhere on the coast.” Chime tugged the paper around so he could study it. “It all must mean something. That image they showed you, crossbreeds, a salt sea…”

Moon stared at the sketch of the flower with the door inside it, feeling his brain shake off the sleep and slowly grind into motion. “They said Shade was the key. Maybe they meant that literally.”

Chime frowned at the paper, and Lithe said slowly, “The key to this door. Only someone who is part Fell and part Raksura can open it?”

“Or someone who looked like the image they showed us.” Moon wished he had had a longer look at it. “A forerunner, one of our ancestors.”