“You don’t think.” That wasn’t reassuring, but then nothing about Rift was. “How did you find the way down here without killing the guardthings in the main hall?” That would have had to alert Ardan that Rift had been poking around down here.
“I found it during the day,” Rift said. He jerked his head toward Esom and Karsis. “What are we going to do with them?”
That “we” was awfully confident. Switching back to Kedaic, Moon asked Esom, “If you’re a shaman, why didn’t you escape before?”
Stiffly, Esom said, “I’ve tried, but I knew the wardens would stop us. As you saw, the sight-spell doesn’t work very well on them.”
“We weren’t very organized,” Karsis admitted. “We tried to get Negal and Orlis, but the guards had already locked them in. And we aren’t even certain where Ardan is keeping our other crew members.”
“How were you planning to get through the barrier?”
Esom started to speak, then hesitated, and Moon saw Karsis dart a look at him. Esom said, “With all the confusion, I thought we might be able to conceal ourselves down here until morning, when the barrier goes down and the outside doors are opened.”
They were terrible liars. “Hide from that creature till morning? I don’t think so. I think you knew you could get through the barrier.”
The two groundlings exchanged a grim look, and Esom said, “All right, yes. I think I can get through the barrier, but I’m not certain. I’ve never had a chance to escape from the upper level and test it.”
Rift told Moon, “I knew he was a wizard all along, but he can’t do much. He’s not nearly as powerful as Ardan.”
Esom stopped abruptly and stared at Rift. He said, “You knew?”
Karsis demanded, more to the point, “Why didn’t you tell Ardan?”
Rift bared a fang in an ironic smile. “I’m not Ardan’s servant.”
Esom sneered back. “So you’re his pet?”
Growling, Rift reached toward him and Esom jerked back. Moon hissed and flicked his spines. Rift glared resentfully, but eased away from Esom.
Esom looked from Rift to Moon, then wet his lips and said, “If you don’t help us escape, we’ll tell Ardan’s men which way you went.”
Karsis cleared her throat, a little embarrassed. Apparently she had seen the flaw in her brother’s plan. Moon said, “Or we could just kill you.”
Esom blinked, then grimaced. Karsis elbowed him and he glared at her. “All right, fine.” He took a deep breath. “I think I know where the seed is, the one you’ve been asking about, that Ardan took from the giant tree. I’m not certain, but I have a good idea.”
That was different. Moon took a step nearer, looming over him. “Where?”
Esom lifted his chin and squared his shoulders, the groundling equivalent of lifting his spines. “I want your promise to help us escape, and to help us get our friends away from Ardan.”
Moon thought it over fast, flicking his spines. “I can take you out of here with us now, but I can’t go back for your friends. Ardan will search the city for us and there’s no way we can get back inside this tower.” That might or might not be true, but he wasn’t going to make promises he couldn’t keep.
Esom looked at Karsis, who gave him a helpless shrug and said, “At least we’d be free to try to help the others.”
Esom, jaw set and ready to argue, visibly deflated. “All right, I’ll—”
A thump somewhere above interrupted him. Rift twitched in alarm. “They’re coming.”
“Come on, move.” Moon gave Rift a push and started away down the passage. Motioning Karsis and Esom to follow, he whispered, “You keep talking.”
Keeping his voice low, Esom said rapidly, “When we first arrived in the city, Ardan let us explore at will. Towards the front of the creature, near a flooded valley where its left front leg dips down, there’s a domed building that looked as if it had some important purpose. Negal and I went there. Part of it is apparently used as some sort of mortuary temple, but the public area was covered with carvings showing what seemed to be early magisters taking control of the leviathan by placing an object in contact with its body. These carvings led toward a doorway, with a stairwell down. Guards prevented us from going any further, but…” He hesitated, and Karsis nudged him impatiently. “Part of my ability… I can see and feel emanations from magical artifacts. That’s how I found the metora stone to power our vessel, the Klodifore. And I’m sure there’s something down there, some source of magic,” Esom finished.
Moon managed not to hiss impatiently. He was glad he hadn’t made them any extravagant promises in a moment of weakness. “Ardan didn’t have the seed then. Why do you think it’s there now?”
Esom said, “On the journey through the forest, he kept talking about how urgent this was, that the survival of the city depended on it, that they were in danger of losing control of the leviathan.”
Karsis added, “When we reached the tree, we only spent one day there. Once he found the seed, he wanted to leave immediately.”
Esom continued, “We haven’t seen the seed since we got back to the city. It stands to reason, if he wanted it to help him and the other magisters with the leviathan, it must be in that building, in the place where they control the creature.”
If it was a lie, it was an odd one. Esom could have said the seed was still in the tower, to trick Moon into going back for his friends.
Then Rift said, “He’s right. Ardan took it there the day we got back from the Reaches.”
Moon stared at him. He said through gritted teeth, “You said you didn’t know where it was.”
Rift turned back to give Moon a look of impatient innocence. “I knew it wasn’t in the tower. I didn’t want to waste time trying to convince you to leave.”
Moon switched to Raksuran to say, pointedly, “If you knew this, why did you let me make a bargain with him?” He would have taken Esom and Karsis out with them anyway, as long as they were here, but he wanted to know what Rift was playing at.
Rift paused at an intersection in the passage, where another ramp spiraled more steeply down. The flow of damp, foul-smelling air hadn’t increased, but Moon could hear the growing sound of rushing wind, rising and falling in oddly regular gusts. In the same language, Rift said, as if it was obvious, “We don’t need them. You don’t have to keep the bargain.”
This was an interesting insight into Rift’s thought processes. Moon said, “If you expect me to trust you, you might want to stop lying and betraying people in front of me.”
Rift twitched, watched him uncertainly, then turned to lead the way down the ramp.
Moon couldn’t trust what Rift told him and he couldn’t trust Esom and Karsis, but with all three together, he might be able to get something close to the truth out of them. Though if Esom had really concealed his power from Ardan all this time, he was a better liar than Moon would have thought.
Running footsteps from somewhere far up the passage suggested that Ardan’s men had found the panel and opened it. They didn’t have much time.
Two more spirals down, and the ramp ended in a low-ceilinged chamber, sparsely lit with the green mold, with a large round hole in the center of the floor. Moon stepped to the edge. The shaft plunged more than a hundred paces down, the bottom lost in the dim greenish light. The wind sound came from somewhere below, and the smell was horrific.
“Down there,” Rift said. He glanced worriedly back up the ramp. “We need to hurry.”
Esom and Karsis exchanged an appalled look. Wonderful, Moon thought, privately agreeing with them. To Rift he said, “You take her, I’ll take—”
“No,” Esom interrupted. He told Moon, “You take Karsis.”