“That thing that came near the flying boat—” Moon began.
Jade finished, “Was it them?”
Stone waved a hand. “It was them. Now quiet, I’m trying to get them to tell me why they’re looking for these others.”
Moon looked around the room at all the little beings watching from their niches, or from the floor. If they could form a flying creature of that size, what else could they do? He wondered if they had only formed an upright shape because they were imitating the Raksura.
Balm had moved a little distance down the corridor. “If some of them are missing, that would explain why this place feels so empty.”
“And why there are so many supplies,” Chime added.
Moon turned back as Stone said, “A large group—I have no idea how many, I can’t understand that part—went out gleaning some time ago and didn’t return. They’ve been searching for them.”
Moon bit back a hiss. “Another disappearance in this area.” The sealings at the trading port had heard of one and they had randomly encountered another. How many had there been?
He could tell Jade was trying to keep the growl out of her voice as she said, “Have they seen signs of Fell?”
It didn’t seem a difficult question, but the problem was this strange colony of beings perceived the world in an entirely different way than Raksura, or groundlings, or sealings, or anybody else Moon had ever encountered. They didn’t seem to understand scent, at least not as Raksura did. They could describe things the group as a whole saw, but not in terms Stone could translate.
Moon muttered to Chime, “We’ve talked with plants that were better at communicating with other species.”
“Plants make sense,” Chime said. “Maybe they all got together because no one else understands them.”
After a time of fruitless back and forth, Jade twitched her spines in resignation and said, “Tell them we’ll watch for their missing companions in our travels, but we must go.”
Stone spoke again, and the beings answered. Stone sighed and rubbed his face wearily. “They just asked me if I thought their friends were dead.”
Moon looked away. Just because the beings were nearly impossible to communicate with didn’t mean they didn’t have the capacity to care for each other. And their way of living was so intimate, if they did care, they probably cared a great deal.
Jade winced. “Tell them yes.”
Stone said something in the trade language, and the shape collapsed, all the little beings flowing away back to the walls. Their self-generated light started to fade. Stone stepped out of the room. “Let’s get out of here and leave them alone.”
They found their way up through the structure and out to the open platform. The cool wind lifted Moon’s frills and took away the heavy scents of dried sea wrack and rotting vegetation. It was a relief to take to the air again, and leave the silence of the hive behind.
They returned and gathered in the common room of the flying boat, where Jade told Callumkal and Rorra and the others what had happened. Moon was standing back against the wall with Chime when he heard Vendoin ask Merit, “You can actually see the future, then?” She seemed completely astonished. “It isn’t superstition?”
Chime exchanged a look with Moon and gritted his teeth. Moon shrugged. Vendoin had been polite and had seemed to readily accept them, but he had long since decided he liked the others better. There were some indications that Vendoin found them amusingly primitive. The other Kish might have had their fears about traveling with Raksura, but at least they had been honest about it.
Merit kept his temper and said, “It’s not really seeing the future. The future isn’t there yet, so you can’t see it. We see things that might happen, as images, based on what we’re doing or about to do. It’s easier to scry when you’re looking for something that has happened, and trying to see what effect it has on what you should do next.”
Vendoin took this explanation in with blank surprise. Fortunately Callumkal got the room’s attention and said, “From now on, all crew on deck will go armed, and will take turns standing ready at the bow and stern weapons. Keeping them replenished and ready to fire simply isn’t enough.”
It was a wise precaution, though Moon felt they should have already been doing it.
As the group around Callumkal broke up, Rorra and Kalam came over to join them. Rorra was frowning in worry. Kalam said, “It would be so much easier if Avagram hadn’t died.”
Chime asked, “Who?”
“He was the arcanist for the expedition, but it turned out he was ill, and he died while we were on the way to the city for the first time,” Rorra explained.
“That’s unfortunate,” Chime said, and flicked a look at Moon.
Moon agreed. It was also convenient, if the Fell were involved, and didn’t want a Kishan sorcerer around. But after so many days on board, he couldn’t imagine any of these people as being under Fell influence. He knew that didn’t mean anything, but it was hard not to be lulled into a sense of false security, even for him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Finally one morning, as the sun rose, the dim shape in the distance slowly became the escarpment where the Kish said the ancient city lay. It was taller than the sea-mounts they had passed on the way here, and it stretched for some distance across the water, bigger than any other island they had seen. The gray cliffs had vertical ridges like a curtain, with greenery growing in the cracks. Above them the top of the escarpment was lost in mist.
Leaning on the railing, Chime said, “How did the Kishan even know there was anything up on top?”
“You can see the walls when the mist clears, I am told,” Delin said. He made an ironic gesture. “They said it is tantalizing.”
Deliberately? Moon wondered. He knew he could be overly suspicious—some people would say it was much worse than “overly”—but if this place was a trap . . . If it was a trap, it should be easier for groundlings to get into. The forerunner city under the island hadn’t been tantalizing; it had been a fortress turned prison, well hidden, difficult to get into, and impossible for its single inmate to escape. That made much more sense.
Moon asked Delin, “Are you still conflicted about what we should do?”
“My conflict has only increased, with every step we go toward this place.” Delin watched the distant shape of the formation with a grimace of distaste.
It was the next morning when they drew close enough to see the narrow rocky strip of land at the cliff’s foot, not a place a sailing boat would want to try to tie up, and no room for a flying boat of any kind to dock without the wind smashing it into the cliff wall. Several hundred paces from the escarpment lay a much smaller island, with a narrow beach around it, covered with ferns and broadleaf trees and flowering brush; it was suspiciously rounded, as if it might have been shaped by intention and not random nature. Scattered around it were several smaller islands, or maybe miniature sea-mounts: rounded rock formations standing up above the water, covered with greenery, each no more than a few hundred paces across.
As the flying boat curved around the island, Moon spotted a large sailing ship anchored off the beach. This was the Kishan vessel occupied by the other half of Callumkal’s expedition.
It was longer than their flying boat, with four masts with what looked like vertical expanding sails, not unlike those on a Golden Islander wind-ship, except there were many of them and the arrangement seemed far more complicated. The stern was wide and there were three levels of deck cabins stacked like stairs. “It’s called a sunsailer,” Kalam explained. “It’s made of metal, but uses the moss like this ship does, to generate power for the motivator.”