Probably, and it had obviously been an ill-considered decision, but as part of the group who had attracted the waterlings’ attention, Moon wasn’t going to point fingers. He said, “Just hold on. Maybe it’ll stop.” He didn’t think it was going to stop but there was no point right now in saying so.
He looked up toward the steering cabin, visible from this angle, and through the window saw Rorra, Kellimdar, and three other Kishan shouting, gesturing, and wrestling with something that was probably the steering mechanism. He realized the background roar was the sunsailer’s motivator, desperately fighting the current.
Moon went to the edge of the railing and looked back along the boat, but couldn’t see anyone out on the decks on this side, except the Janderi at the big fire-weapon post on the third deck. There was another Janderan on the far side, grimly keeping a big distance-light pointed toward the whirlpool. Moon hoped all the Raksura had gotten inside already. And that everyone was still alive.
A thump on the deck above made him flinch but it was only Stone, now in his groundling form. He jumped down next to Moon, and frowned at the whirlpool. “So that looks pretty bad.”
“Where’s Jade and the others?” Moon asked. He wrapped his claws around the railing. Despite the furious efforts in the steering cabin, the sunsailer drew closer to the circle of rushing water, the deck sloped more steeply.
“They’re inside, on the lower deck. Waterlings were climbing up the stern, but they left when this started. Kalam told everyone to get inside and lock the doors.” Stone asked Magrim, “You want to go inside?”
Magrim shook his head. “The crystal in the ports isn’t made for this. It’s going to break. If I’m going to drown, I’d rather do it out here than inside.”
Moon would rather do it with the other Raksura, but he wasn’t sure there was time. Then Stone said, “Delin doesn’t think we’re going to die.”
The sunsailer jerked sideways and Moon gripped the railing as he nearly slammed into Stone. The motivator jittered and sputtered. He raised his voice over the roar of water. “Does he?”
“He thinks this is happening for a reason,” Stone explained. He ducked as a huge gout of water splashed up over the decks. “He admitted it might not be a good reason.”
Then the bow dipped and the boat surged forward straight into the darkness at the center of the whirlpool.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Moon wrapped one arm around the railing and the other around Stone’s waist. He saw Stone grip the railing and grab Magrim’s arm. And then water rushed up at them.
After five heartbeats of nothing but saltwater and blind terror, the wave passed. Moon was dripping wet, salt stinging in the cuts and abrasions in his scales from the waterlings’ claws. It was dark and he was huddled against Stone’s side, tucked under his arm. He blinked water out of his eyes and looked for Magrim. He was still here too, tucked under Stone’s other arm.
The sunsailer’s distance-light swung wildly, allowing glimpses of dark curving walls, streaked with white mineral deposits and patches of mold. The light steadied, proving the operator had managed to survive, and swung to illuminate the way ahead. The sunsailer raced down a dark straight channel filled with water, which rose as the basin behind them emptied into it. Moon retrieved his scattered wits, flattened his spines to keep from cutting Stone’s arm, and said, “Delin thinks this is the way out?”
It made a strange kind of sense, at least for this place. Only one boat could take it at a time, and the lock was there to prevent others from being pulled out of the canal while the water was draining into the opening. Forcing the lock to move must have made the passage open as well.
“Right.” Stone’s voice was tight and strained. He hadn’t been as calm about this as he had pretended. “We couldn’t get all the groundlings off the boat, and there were enough waterlings to eat us all if we tried, so we decided to risk it.”
“‘We,’” Moon asked. Not that he was arguing.
“Me and Delin,” Stone admitted. “We didn’t have much of a chance to discuss it with anybody else.”
Magrim, who had been cursing steadily in Kedaic, now said in Altanic, “We must be past the wall of the escarpment by now. Perhaps the Fell won’t know where to look for us.”
He was right. Moon said, “I wonder how it goes back up?”
“That’s a good question,” Stone said.
Magrim said, “I hope it’s not jammed shut, like the lock.”
Moon glanced up at what he could see of the curved ceiling overhead and hoped so too. But the outer door on the far side of the escarpment had still worked, so he thought the chances were good. He hoped the chances were good.
Stone twisted around to look up at the steering cabin. “There’s Jade.”
Moon looked, squinting past the spray of saltwater. In the lighted cabin he could see Jade looking out the window, beside Rorra and the others working at steering the boat. He thought he could see Callumkal and Kalam in the rear of the cabin. The one thing that was clear was that Jade didn’t seem pleased to see him and Stone out here.
Moon turned back toward the dark onrushing tunnel. “We’re going to hear about this later.”
Stone leaned forward, eyes narrowed, staring toward the end of the tunnel. “Maybe.”
Some distance ahead the darkness of the tunnel gave way to something deeper and blacker, that the light couldn’t penetrate. Not a wall, Moon thought. Not a wall would be good. The image of the boat jammed up against an unmovable barrier while the tunnel filled up . . . But the tunnel wasn’t filling up. This water was going somewhere.
Then Stone said, “It’s another chamber.”
Magrim groaned.
As the end of the tunnel approached, the distance-light began to show detail. They headed toward a big cavern filled with oddly still water, and it didn’t seem to be much lower than the tunnel.
Moon braced himself against Stone as the sunsailer shot out of the tunnel and dropped a few paces. The deck jolted with bone-rattling impact and water fountained up on all sides. The thrumming ceased as the motivator cut off and the boat slewed around in a circle as Rorra and the others managed to stop its headlong progress. The distance-light swung around, frantically at first, then more methodically as nothing immediately terrible happened.
The chamber seemed circular, but water ran down the walls and Moon couldn’t see if they were stone or metal. But the light kept catching white and blue reflections off the water, the colors of whatever material was under it. And where was the water coming from?
Then the boat jolted again, and the water trembled, suddenly choppy with ripples and little disturbed waves. A window opened somewhere above and one of the Kishan yelled something in another language. “She says, ‘Look up, look up,’” Magrim translated.
The light swung upward in response and lit a ceiling of light-colored material, all in delicate folds, like the outer petals of an elaborate flower. Staring upward, Moon hissed in astonishment. “That’s forerunner.”
Stone stared. “You’re sure?”
“Yes!” This was just like the flower-shaped doorways and carvings they had seen in the underwater forerunner city. There had been nothing like this in the builders’ city.
The sunsailer jolted again, and it, the water, and whatever the water was resting on began to move upward. Moon drew a sharp breath. “Oh. Oh, I hope—” The outer door in the forerunner city had needed a forerunner, or a half-Fell half-Raksura close enough to forerunner, to open it, unless you could find and manipulate a hidden lock. If this was set up the same way . . .
Then the flower carving trembled and the petals folded back in a complex spiral. Past it was darkness, but it was the living darkness of a cloud-strewn night sky. Moon sagged against the railing, the release of tension making him weak. “No, it’s letting us out.” And it wasn’t going to dump half a sea’s worth of water on them, either. The chamber stretched all the way up to the surface.