“It’s worth a try,” Moon said in relief. It might be the way this particular set of parasites had gotten down here in the first place. Even if it didn’t go all the way through the outer skin, if there was room for Stone to shift, he might be able to tear an opening for them to slip through.
“Wait.” Esom’s expression was pained and reluctant. “As much as I want to get out of here… there’s a magical source that way.” He pointed down the bigger tunnel that wound off through the leviathan’s flesh. “If it’s your seed, I don’t know how or why it would be down here, but—”
No, Moon wanted to say, we need to get out now, we need to go after Jade and Flower. “Are you sure?”
Esom winced in resignation. “Unfortunately, yes. Believe me, I’d rather go up.”
Stone turned to Chime. “Is he right? Can you feel it?”
Chime’s spines ruffled again. “No. I’m not a mentor anymore.”
Stone eyed him deliberately. “You knew there was a barrier over the outer door.”
A muscle worked in Chime’s jaw. He said, flatly, “I can’t do magic like Esom does.”
“How do you know you can’t?” Esom challenged. “Did you ever try?”
Chime hissed at him, and Esom drew back, affronted.
“I hate trusting the groundling, but we have to look.” River faced Stone. “We can’t come all this way and—”
“We know,” Moon snapped. He looked at Stone. “We’ll take the other tunnel.”
Stone gave him a grim nod.
They followed the bigger tunnel, passing two more passages that led directly upward. Moon gritted his back teeth and resisted the urge to alter their course.
Moon sensed the change ahead before he saw or heard anything. He halted abruptly. The others froze in place behind him, but Esom stumbled. It didn’t matter. Moon had the feeling that whatever blocked the airflow ahead already knew they were here. Nothing came at them, but after a moment he heard movement, scraping, a low grunt.
Moon eased forward. As the tunnel curved, he saw another narrow passage that intersected with it at a sharp angle. A group of beings climbed up it toward them.
They had mottled gray-white bodies, heavily muscled, with oblong heads, eyes protected by heavy folds, and wide mouths. Their skin was made up of tough armor plates, overlapping like scales. Moon realized these were the same pallid creatures he had seen in the space below the city, that bore a superficial resemblance to the big tree frogs from the suspended forest. So the tunnels that lead upward probably do go all the way out, he thought. Several pushed forward to block the main tunnel, the creatures in the back jostling each other for a look at the Raksura.
“What do they want?” Chime whispered nervously.
He had spoken in Kedaic, which everyone except River had been speaking for Esom’s benefit. It was a surprise when the creature in the lead rasped in the same language, “These tunnels belong to the Thluth. What do you want here?”
“We need to get past,” Moon said, his voice tight with tension. “That’s all.”
“You use our tunnels?” The leader’s mouth split in a wide, fanged grin. It had the largest, sharpest teeth Moon had ever seen in something groundling-sized, well-suited for gnawing through leviathan hide. It nodded toward Esom, who stood frozen behind Chime. “We let you—if you give us something to eat. One of them will do.”
Moon heard Chime’s and River’s spines rattle in reflex, and Stone made a derisive hiss. The skin under Moon’s claws started to itch. He said, “That better be a joke.” He had had a bad day, and this was about all he could take.
The leader surged forward aggressively and grinned, its hot, foul breath washing over him. It said, “No joke. Give us food.”
Moon slashed it across the throat, his claws sliding between the armor plates to sink into the thin line of vulnerable white skin. Hot blood splashed on his scales as the creature gurgled and staggered back. The other Thluth caught it as it sunk to the ground. Moon said, “You want any more, or is that going to be enough for you?”
The other Thluth drew away, watching him warily, and some prudently scrambled back down the side passage. Moon stayed where he was, flexing his claws, as Stone prodded Chime and Esom past. River eased by after them. Moon followed, watching as the Thluth dragged their leader’s body away.
They continued up the tunnel. After a moment, Esom said shakily, “Thank you for not feeding me to them. I appreciate—”
“Later,” Stone told him, and flicked a look back at Moon. “Don’t talk right now.”
They didn’t pass any other intersecting passages. The tunnel itself began to get smaller, rougher, and they had to duck under the stalactites. Moon set his jaw, and suppressed the urge to go back and kill a few more Thluth. They had demanded tribute for passage to a dead end.
But as the tunnel narrowed to a point where Moon thought they would have to turn around, they came to a large hole chewed out of the wall.
Stone stopped in the entrance and tasted the air as he held up the light, though all Moon could smell was rotting leviathan.
“This could be something,” Stone muttered, and stepped through the opening.
Moon followed with the others, and climbed through into a round chamber. It stretched upward, far beyond their light, the ceiling lost in darkness. A round column in the center plunged down into the leviathan’s flesh.
Moon paced impatiently around the chamber to make certain it was a dead end. He didn’t know why the Thluth had chewed this space out, but there was nothing here for them. “This isn’t it. We need to keep moving.”
“No, we’re in the right place,” Esom said. He had stepped to the edge of the center shaft to examine the column. “I don’t think this is the source, but arcane emanations are echoing through it.” He glanced at them. “I meant the source of the magical power—”
Teeth gritted, Chime said, “They understood you.”
“—must be in contact with it,” Esom finished stubbornly.
Stone tilted his head, staring hard at the column. “He’s right. That’s metal under there.”
“What?” Moon came back to his side and squinted to see. He had thought it was just another part of the leviathan’s flesh. Looking more closely, he saw verdigrised metal glinting between calcified lumps and dried ooze.
Chime went to the wall of the chamber and ran his hand over the surface. “I don’t see any teeth marks. I don’t think the parasites made this chamber. Maybe the groundlings cut it out so they could put that thing here.”
Moon turned back to the column. Maybe they had found something after all. “So this is anchoring part of the city to the leviathan?”
“Maybe,” Esom said, “But it must be in contact with something magical—”
“Up there somewhere?” River demanded, looking up into the space above them.
Stone held the light up, but all they could see was the column stretching up into darkness. Stone said, “River, take the light, climb up there. Not the column, go up the wall.”
River took the light-rock, clutched it in his teeth, and started up the chamber’s wall. It was the first time Moon had ever seen him do anything without a bad attitude. They watched his progress, the light growing smaller, until they stood in heavy darkness. Moon estimated River had gone about a hundred paces up the wall when he stopped. Moon hissed out a curse. River’s light shone on the roof of the chamber, where the leviathan’s flesh had grown back to enclose the column and close off any passage or opening. “If there was anything up there, we can’t get to it,” he said, frustrated.