THE DEAD CITY

This novella takes place some turns before the events of The Cloud Roads, before Moon came to the Indigo Cloud Court …

Moon had lost track of the days he had traveled from Saraseil.

The sun was setting as the grassland below gradually turned to marsh. The salt-tinged wind told him that there was a sea somewhere to the south, and he had just enough sense left to avoid it. He had been flying low, following a rough track that was beaten through the sweet-scented grass by turns and turns of groundling feet. It was recent, and nothing like the ancient but still functional stone roads he had encountered often enough.

Anyone else might have been looking for a place to die; he was so indifferent as to what happened to him next that there seemed little point in anything, even dying.

The track stopped at the edge of a shallow lake, with stands of reeds and floating purple and white flowers. Big delicate insects with wings like shards of glass flitted over it. The far shore rose up into hills cloaked with heavy jungle.

Moon circled and landed on the soft ground, his claws sinking into it. There was no dock, but there was a pile of long narrow boats, made by weaving the dried reeds together. A limp and tattered traders’ flag hung on a pole nearby. It was dull gold with a stripe, and meant the boats were free to use but not to be kept. It also meant that there was something on the other side of the lake, maybe a settlement, maybe just another track through the dirt. Mist rose over the water and the boats seemed to beckon. He had been going forward so long he didn’t want to stop.

There might be people nearby, so he shifted to groundling. The shock of his exhaustion dropped him to his knees. He closed his eyes and felt the world swing around him. Maybe he had been flying too long. Maybe he was dying from contact with the Fell, as if even their skin was poisonous. After a moment the world subsided back into place, and he shook his head and pushed to his feet.

Whatever it was, Moon couldn’t face shifting back to his other form. He pulled a boat off the pile, and found a pole for it, and pushed it into the water. The dry reeds cracked when he stepped onto it, but the weaving held together. As tiny crabs and little green-silver fish fled, he poled the boat forward.

The last of the evening light gradually failed but the moon was half-full and the sky was clear, a dark bowl of starlight. There was a steady buzz and chirp from the insects, soft splashing and plops from the small shelled creatures living among the flowers. Every so often a muted light source glowed from under the water, a faint white light that illuminated the bugs skating on the surface. The light might be from the cities of tiny waterlings, or a plant, or a kind of water creature, using its natural illumination to attract insects to eat.

After a short time, Moon saw he had been right to shift to groundling; there were lamps in the distance, reflecting off the water.

The lights were steady, and the glow was white and clear, like the light beneath the lake’s surface. As he drew closer he saw the owners stood on two wide flat boats, and were drawing nets through the shallow water. He could tell they were bipedal groundlings, and not much else. He slid silently past them.

Moon wasn’t sure how much time had gone by when he spotted another white light ahead. Closer, and he saw it hung from a pole with another trader flag attached, marking a dock. It lay at the base of the heavy jungle, which sloped upward to the dark shapes of the hills.

The dock was part of a ruin, a stone statue several times as tall as Moon. It sat in a kneeling position at the edge of the lake, a platform sloping out from it into the water. It would have been even taller, but the head had been knocked off at some distant time. As he pulled the boat up the platform and out of the water, Moon saw there was weather-worn carving on the body that might have been meant to represent scaled skin. Before Saraseil, that would have been intriguing, a possibility to be explored. Moon had never known what he was, had never seen anyone else like him since his mother and siblings had been killed, so many turns ago. Wherever he had gone, he had always looked for signs of people like him. Now … Now he just dragged the boat past the statue and left it in the grass next to the others.

More boats were tied up along the shore, round ones and a few flat square rafts, more evidence that there was a settlement somewhere near.

The track to it lay beyond the statue, marked by another flag, and he followed it up the slope through the trees. The jungle was a mix of giant ferns and hardwoods festooned with moss so thick it was like they were wearing cloaks, and their leaves blocked all the starlight. It would have been difficult for a groundling without good night vision, but Moon picked his way up it lightly and almost soundlessly, relying on his perception of shapes and a sense that told him what was a shadow and what was a solid object. The air was heavily scented by the moss and wet earth.

At a bend in the trail Moon started to track movement not far away, paralleling him. It was a big body, whatever it was, sliding through the moss, brushing curtains of it aside, grass and small ferns crunching underfoot. Stalking him. He paused and growled, “Come and get me.” It came out deep and rough, in his other voice, though he hadn’t shifted.

The movement stopped abruptly, was silent for several considering moments, then it changed direction and headed away.

Moon hissed in frustration and continued up the trail. A few moments later he realized there had been no predator scent, and he wasn’t certain if he had hallucinated the encounter or not.

After a time he saw more lights ahead, and then the trees gave way to a clearing. There was a structure but it was hard to make out in the darkness. He could see enough to tell it was made out of reeds, woven into big basket-like shapes, hanging from or braced against a tree or some other structure he couldn’t make out. From the lights hanging in the triangular windows, it went up at least four uneven levels, and it was draped with vines. There were caravanserai flags on a pole in front of it, the ones meaning that accommodation and food were available.

Voices came from inside, and he followed the path up to the opening in the lowest level.

There wasn’t a door, just a short reed-woven tunnel. The scent of the cut reeds was heady and faintly sweet, and made even more intense by the damp air. Moon stepped quietly, finding a doorway into a big open chamber. White lights hung from ropes strung across the curved ceiling, and the hearth was in a big metal ball on a stand, a grill around the middle keeping the coals from rolling out onto the reed floor. There were a dozen or so groundlings having a loud conversation in a mix of Altanic and at least one other language he didn’t know.

Most of them were large and burly, covered with what looked like gray-green forest floor moss but might be tightly curled wiry fur, good for repelling water and stinging insects. It obscured their bodies and faces so it was hard to make out any other detail. They wore rough skirts made of woven leaves hardened with lacquer, and carried knives at their belts, but they were the sort of knives more used for fish-scaling than stabbing. They weren’t the only type of groundlings in the room but none of the others looked remotely like Moon’s groundling form. There was no possibility of blending in, but Moon stepped into the room anyway.

Some glanced at him but went back to their argument. But one of the green-gray-furred ones shouted and shoved back through the others.

He grabbed Moon by the throat. Moon felt the blunt claws dig into his skin and two things went through him: a wave of rage and the realization that he was ravenously hungry.

The spark of self-preservation that had brought him here flared just enough to keep him from shifting. The groundling was saying, “This is our house now. What have you got to pay for—” when Moon took his hand and bent it back at the wrist. He twisted the arm around and put the groundling on the floor.

He expected the others to attack him, but when he looked up they were all standing around watching, some concerned, others resentful. One, a short groundling with dark leathery skin and long white hair, said, “It’s not your house, Ventl. You, stranger, did you come here to trade?”

Moon said, “I’m traveling. The flags said this was a caravanserai.” His voice came out rough and thick; when he had growled at the movement in the brush, it had been the first time he had spoken in days.

The others muttered in a language that wasn’t Altanic. The one Moon was standing on who was apparently called Ventl said, “It’s for trade.”

The white-haired one said, “You shut your face, Ventl.” He added to Moon, “It’s a caravanserai.”

Moon released Ventl and stepped back. Ventl leapt to his feet and snarled, but kept carefully out of arm’s reach. He said, apparently not to Moon, “One traveler doesn’t make this a caravanserai, Ghatli!”

Ghatli told him, “Take your stupid face and your stupid relatives and get out, Ventl. Go back to your camp before the miners eat you.”

Ventl snarled again and made menacing grabbing gestures at Ghatli. Moon felt a growl building in his throat and managed to swallow it back; Ventl was just posturing, trying to save his pride. Some of the other furred ones urged him away, and the whole group moved toward the door. Other green-furred ones stayed, wandering off now that the fight was over.

Ghatli watched them go, narrow-eyed. Looking at him more closely, Moon realized he was actually female, or some gender close to female. The dark color and roughened texture of her skin made detail hard to see, but there were breasts under the clumps of white hair trailing down her chest and shoulders. Her fingers didn’t have the blunt claws of the others, but were long and delicate. She wore the same kind of loose wrap kilt, with decorative bits of polished shell sewn on fabric that looked as if it might be made from pounded reed. She turned to Moon and looked him up and down. “You’ve come a long way?”

Being reticent about where you came from was never a good idea, and Moon answered automatically, “From Saraseil. Going toward Kish.”

“Ah.” The hair tufts above Ghatli’s ears twitched. “We’ve had word of refugees.”

One of the others said, “They said terrible things happened there. That it was the Fell. Is it true?”

Moon conquered the impulse to shift and tear his way out through the wall but managed to make himself just step back instead. He didn’t want to talk about Saraseil. “Is it a caravanserai or not?”

“That is actually a long story—” Ghatli paused, squinted at him and continued, “Perhaps later. You want food?”

Yes, Moon wanted food.

When Moon woke he lay there for a time, sensing the change in the air that told him the sun had risen over the hills, feeling the faint vibrations through the reed floors and walls as the other inhabitants moved around in the rooms below. He felt more than heard their voices, and the mix of their scents blended with the sweet reeds in the damp air. His head was clear, or at least more clear than it had been last night. He just had no idea what he was going to do now.

He had slept unevenly, all his dreams too close to the surface. He had heard Fell voices on the wind, over and over again, and woke in a flush of panic to find the night outside calm and filled with nothing but the chorus of insects and frogs and treelings. He knew the Fell could do things to the minds of groundlings; he had seen the horrific results at close quarters. And he knew Liheas, the Fell ruler who had captured him, had been able to affect him to some extent. He had thought he had broken free of it when he had broken Liheas’ neck, but maybe some influence still lingered.

It was lucky he had found the caravanserai, a relatively safe and private place to have his nightmares. Maybe some day when Moon could appreciate still being alive he would feel grateful for that.

After the encounter with Ventl, he hadn’t expected anything to be easy, but Ghatli had been surprisingly hospitable and no one else in the place had seemed hostile. Moon had still had a small bag of agate chips, which Saraseil had used for currency, and Ghatli had taken half of them in exchange for a pan of a rice mixture with nuts and pieces of fish that had been warming in another metal ball oven in the next room. Moon had eaten it standing beside the oven and wasn’t really aware of anything else until Ghatli handed him another pan. It was enough to take the edge off, though Moon was going to have to hunt soon. He wasn’t entirely sure why he hadn’t stopped to hunt before reaching the shallow lake, but then he wasn’t entirely sure how long he had been traveling.

He had followed Ghatli through another roomful of groundlings who were having some earnest discussion about something and to a winding ladder that led up to the sleeping rooms, which were just small but private cubbies stacked on the third and fourth levels of the structure. Moon had stayed awake long enough after Ghatli left to find an emergency way out, an opening in the roof at the top of the ladderwell meant for ventilation. He had also stopped to look at the lights, and saw they were made of some very thin clear bladder-like substance with a little glowing mass inside that looked like coral. It must be harvested from whatever caused the occasional glowing spots in the lake.

When he had finally retreated to his cubby he was so exhausted he didn’t even unroll the blanket, just curled up around it and sank into sleep.

Now he sighed and rubbed his face. He knew what he should do, what he always did. Leave the caravanserai and keep going … whichever direction he had been going. North, towards Kish? He was definitely west of what was left of the city of Saraseil. Maybe one day he would travel far enough and find a place that had never heard of the Fell, and where shapeshifters weren’t regarded as vicious predators. Since every shapeshifter he had encountered other than his own family had been a vicious predator, this seemed unlikely.

Even more unlikely now that he had seen the Fell for himself. At least now he knew why groundlings always mistook his shifted form for one. When he shifted, his body grew taller and his shoulders broader. He was stronger but much lighter, and his skin grew overlapping matte black scales with an under sheen of bronze. He grew retractable claws on his hands and feet and a long tail, and a mane of flexible frills and spines around his head that ran down to his lower back. He didn’t look exactly like a Fell ruler, but it was more than close enough for terrified groundlings.

Moon dragged himself out of the too-warm cubby. Ghatli had said last night that there was a latrine and bathing area on the lowest level of the house. He climbed down to the main level and wandered through, ignoring the curious looks from the groundlings who either lived here or seemed to use this place as a general gathering area.

Most were similar in shape and color to the green-gray-furred ones he had seen last night, but there was also a party of more unusual ones clearly preparing to leave. They were about waist-high to Moon and had heavy armored shells, rounded over where their heads should be, multiple dark eyes peering out from under a rim implanted with polished stones. They had tied their packs in front around their middles, so very little of the rest of them was visible, but they had several arms and large arrays of delicate fingers. Ghatli was speaking to them in a language Moon didn’t understand, but she seemed to be trying to convince them to stay.

Moon found the half-ladder half-stair down near the front entrance. The latrine and separate bathing room had been dug out of the hill and there were several small basins, a large round metal bath with a pump to fill it, a stove with a supply of wood to warm the water, oily soap, and old blanket remnants to use as towels. The stove had a banked fire that must be from use earlier this morning. There was no one else here now, and Moon thought the gray-furred groundlings who seemed to congregate here probably had no need for it. Their fur looked like it was water-resistant and they would have other ways to clean themselves. The bath would probably be for Ghatli and any groundling travelers who preferred water for washing.

Moon built the fire up and was able to wash enough to feel vaguely awake again. He kept checking himself for wounds and not finding any; his dark bronze skin was smooth and unmarked. He hadn’t been hurt during his escape from Saraseil, but some part of his brain was still convinced he was covered with burns or deep tears and punctures from claws.

When he was trying to get the ground-in dirt of the past several days out of his skin and scalp, the scent of smoke filled his lungs. It was memory, not a real lingering scent, and he stuck his head under the warm water until lack of air forced it away.

He made himself think about practical matters. He had taken nothing with him when he left Saraseil, except the clothes he was wearing and the agate chips which had been in a bag in his pocket. It was part of the magic of shifting that he could take fabric and a few other objects with him between forms, but he hadn’t been paying attention over the last few days and it was just lucky he hadn’t lost them. The light material of the shirt and pants had been fine for city living but had gotten increasingly stained the few times he had had to shift to his groundling form to sleep. But he wasn’t committed enough to washing them to bother finding out if the groundlings here would care if he was naked while they dried. And he didn’t want to stay here that long.

He went back up to the main level, where Ghatli stood in the outer door watching the short armored groundlings trundle away across the caravanserai’s yard. They were heading down the path toward the lake. The sky was overcast and it made the ferns and heavy foliage around the clearing look an even deeper green than they already were.

Ghatli saw Moon and said, with a sigh, “Even the Agun-teil are afraid.”

“Of the Fell?” Moon said, the words out before he could stop them.

“Ah!” Ghatli shuddered, making her sparse fur shake. “No, not the Fell. Not yet. Not ever, please.” She made a complicated gesture which might be a ward against bad luck, or death, or Fell, or anything in general. “No, it’s the miners. They have been attacking anyone who tries to go along the hill trade route. They haven’t come down to the shore yet, but they’ve already frightened off a great many traders.”

Moon considered leaving. The conversation, the caravanserai. If it wasn’t the Fell, he didn’t care. But it was a habit and an ingrained survival skill to pretend to show interest in things that groundlings were interested in, so he said, “The what?”

“You haven’t heard of the miners? You must not have stopped at any of the trade camps along the Lacessian Way, I thought the word had spread—” She eyed him again. “Well, I suppose you didn’t. The miners appeared here three cycles ago. We call them miners because they dig into the hills.”

A vague spark of real interest stirred and Moon squinted up at the rising terrain behind the caravanserai. It was all heavily cloaked in jungle. It looked more like hunting country, or a good spot for gathering fruit and roots. “What are they mining?”

“We have no idea. No one lives up there. It’s good country, and the trade route is right there, but there’s been no settlements, as far as the fishers can remember. Of course there are tales of ghosts, but there always are, in empty places.” Ghatli moved her shoulders uneasily. “There is obviously something the miners want up there, but we don’t know if it is something natural, like metal ore or gemstone, or something buried under the ground.” She lowered her voice. “Perhaps something left by some ancient species.”

Moon nodded absently. One thing that had become obvious in his travels was that the Three Worlds had been home to many and varied peoples over uncounted turns. The hills and the jungle might conceal anything; there were a great many things the miners could be digging for.

Ghatli had apparently been hoping for a reaction of astonishment because she drooped a little. “We thought it a good theory. It’s at least the most interesting theory.”

Moon shrugged, noncommittal.

“Anyway, this place is a major route for the trade along the Lacessian and the Vaganian, which cross on the other side of the heights, but the miners have frightened almost everyone off, and the trader caravans are taking other routes.” She scuffed at the dirt with the horny pads of one foot. “That’s Ventl’s problem. He and the other fishers can’t get anyone to cart his reeds and the traders aren’t here to buy their fish anymore, and it’s made him angry, and he thinks taking over the caravanserai from me will somehow …” She sighed. “We are friends, still, I hope. But he’s afraid and it’s made him strange.”

It took Moon a moment to remember that Ventl was the one who had tried to attack him when he had arrived. It hadn’t been much of an attack. Moon’s lack of interest in the trading difficulties of strange groundlings was in danger of overcoming him, but Ghatli said, “We can’t even talk to the miners. Trader caravans don’t want to mine, they want to trade. Fishers want to fish. The miners have no reason to think anyone here might impinge on … whatever it is they’re doing.”

“They speak a different language?” Moon asked, looking toward the jungle again. He needed to hunt, and he could hear more groundlings plodding and stamping up the path from the lake. This place was getting crowded.

“They don’t speak anything, at least not to us. The fishers who went up into the hills to try to talk to them disappeared.” Ghatli quivered, a mix of anger and disgust. “We think they ate them.”

Moon swallowed the urge to hiss. “They usually do,” he said, bitterly.

“It’s a common problem?” Ghatli asked, startled, “Because—Oh, joy, here’s Ventl again.”

Ventl was coming up the path from the lake. With him were a couple of his green-gray-furred cronies and a new group of groundlings. They were taller and broader than the stocky fishers and had boney square skulls. They wore light leather armor and carried heavy metal weapons: javelins and sickle-like curved blades slung across their backs. That was always a bad sign, in Moon’s experience. Ghatli’s too, evidently, as she muttered, “I hope they don’t want rooms. They’ll go right through the floors.”

The first armored one strode up to them and looked between Moon and Ghatli, as if equally dissatisfied with both Moon’s tattered half-starved look and Ghatli’s appearance in general. Ghatli gave a frustrated twitch and said, “What is this, Ventl? I didn’t know you knew any Cedar-rin.”

Ventl moved his big flat head in a way Moon interpreted as embarrassment or reluctance. He said, “They want to see the miners.”

Ghatli’s ears lifted. “See them in what sense?”

“That’s our concern,” the Cedar-rin said, his voice deep and grating. The skin of his face was oddly pale, but it caught the light as he turned his head and Moon saw it was coated with small pearly scales, and must be as tough as lizard-hide, though not as thick as Moon’s scales in his other form. There was a distinct resemblance to the scales on the broken statue at the old lake dock.

From this angle Moon saw the leader had horns curling out from the back of his skull and the others didn’t. They were all a little smaller, their heads not as large and boney. They might be female, or another gender, or even a variant of the species. The horned Cedar-rin said, “Why is this one here?”

He was talking about Moon. Moon didn’t answer, just continued to stare unblinking at him. Normally he believed in being more circumspect, but his patience for it seemed to have stayed behind when he left Saraseil.

Ghatli said, “He’s just a lodger. If you want to see the miners, just go up that road—” She turned to point toward the wide path that curved up the hill at the far end of the clearing.

The Cedar-rin reached to grab her arm and his hand bounced off Moon’s chest. Moon had stepped in front of Ghatli almost before he knew he was going to do it. He had no idea why, except that the Cedar-rin was large and Ghatli was small, even if she did seem tough and wiry. He looked into the Cedar-rin’s little pale eyes and said, “Tell her what you want. Don’t touch her.”

The Cedar-rin stared, emotion hard to read on its boney face. The others drew their sickles. Ventl came up on the balls of his big feet and Moon could hear reeds creak as the inhabitants of the caravanserai crowded out the doorway.

His voice calm and a little curious, the big Cedar-rin said, “You’re brave for a soft-skin. Do you think you can best us?”

Soft-skin, Moon thought, feeling his upper lip curl. He knew he could best them. He also knew Ghatli and the others wouldn’t much care for him after they saw him do it. His back fangs itched and his fingertips hurt and his pulse pounded through his body with the urge to shift.

Ghatli peered out from behind his elbow. She said, “We’re all friends here, hey? My good friend Ventl brought you here, didn’t he?” The look she directed Ventl’s way must have been poisonous because he rocked back on his heels from the force of it. “Do as my friend here says, and tell me what you want of us.”

The Cedar-rin considered it, then finally said, “Take us to the excavation.”

“It’s easy to find,” Ghatli said. “You take the path there up through the hills to the trade route—”

The Cedar-rin grabbed Ventl by the back of his head, drew a knife curved into a half-circle, and held it to the fur at Ventl’s throat. Ghatli flinched and the other groundlings in the caravanserai gasped in dismay.

If that was as fast as the Cedar-rin could move, Moon wasn’t impressed. But he would have to shift to stop them and he didn’t want to do that yet. He thought they would probably end up leading the Cedar-rin into the hills and it was best to get on with it.

Ghatli held up her hands. “There is no reason to get violent! Of course I’ll take you.”

The Cedar-rin made them go first up the path into the jungle. It was Ghatli, Ventl, the other two fishers who had come with him, and Moon. The Cedar-rin had ignored the other fishers and groundlings inside the caravanserai, and Ghatli had signaled them to stand aside and not try to intervene.

The path was wide and had been well-traveled, but clumps of fast-growing grasses were already sprouting in the packed dirt. The tall fern-trees shaded it, along with moss-draped spiral trees and something that had multiple trunks that branched up and wound around in tight curls. It was warmer here, the scents thick and rich, but the insects, birds, and treelings were oddly quiet. There were a great many low flowering bushes and vines that obscured the ground.

Ventl had tried to walk next to Ghatli but she had told him, “You, you I’m not speaking to. Now shoo.” He followed glumly with his two companions as Ghatli walked beside Moon. Now she muttered, “I hate people who use pejoratives. ‘Soft-skin.’ What does that even mean? He’s made it up himself, like a badly mannered child.”

Moon had heard it used before, but just asked, “What are Cedar-rin?”

“They come from west of the lake shore. They have big stone cities over there, very uncomfortable, I should think. I’ve not seen much of them here. I think the talky one is a male and the others are drones.” She added, “They aren’t traders, at least not on these routes.”

If they were mercenaries hired to drive the miners away from the trade route, they could have said so and been welcomed by the groundlings at the caravanserai with open arms. That they hadn’t didn’t bode well. “You don’t know what they might want, then.”

“No. Perhaps the same thing the miners want? It’s a mystery, as no one has ever wanted anything here before except honest trading.” She looked up at him. “I think we are to be friends. What is your name?”

Moon wasn’t willing to commit to friendship anymore. It had proved too painful in the long run. Often in the short run, too. But there was no reason to be rude to Ghatli. “Moon.”

“Ah.” She was still looking at him. “And what are you, Moon? You don’t look like the traders I have seen from Saraseil.”

“I’m from …” East, he used to say. Always east of where he was now. “I’m not going to tell you,” he finished.

“Well, fair enough.” Ghatli made the gesture of flicking something away, apparently dismissing the subject. After a moment, she sighed. “Now I have to talk to stupid Ventl.”

Ventl, who had clearly been listening the entire time, stepped forward and said, low-voiced, “I don’t know what they want. I met them on the Lacessian Way at the far shore, and I thought they were the escort of a big caravan, and I told them of the miners.” Ventl shook his furry head. “I thought they’d fight them to clear the way for trade, but now it seems they want what the miners are digging for.”

“It seems that, does it?” Ghatli made a derisive noise.

Ventl threw an awkward look over his shoulder, having to turn the upper half of his over-muscled body to do it. “But we could work with them, perhaps. Maybe we want what the miners are here for too—”

“You don’t,” Moon said. He thought it was obvious. “The miners will kill to keep it, the Cedar-rin will kill the miners to get it, someone will kill you to take it.”

Ventl went silent. From behind them, one of his companions whispered, “I told you so.”

Ghatli muttered, “I just hope no one kills us before we have a chance to say we don’t want it, whatever it is.”

Ventl said, grimly, “Here we are.”

The path had been sloping upward and curving around, and now it met a wider track large enough to be called a road. It had been cut into the side of the hill and was heavily packed down, and lined with half-buried water rock. A stelae beside the edge of the path displayed a couple of flags indicating the presence of the caravanserai towards the lakeshore. Ghatli explained, “The hill route. This is as far as anyone’s gone and come back.”

There was a pause where Ventl tried to convince the lead Cedar-rin that this was as far as he needed to be guided and got a clout across the skull and another death threat for his trouble. Moon figured Ventl had it coming, so he didn’t intervene.

They continued on along the trade route. The jungle wasn’t any darker but seemed even more silent. They passed a spring that trickled down the hill through the trees and had been bridged with large flat stones where it crossed the road. A small stone basin had been installed to one side, to collect water for travelers and their grasseaters, and it was obvious this had been a well-traveled and comfortable route before the miners had arrived. Moon tried to taste the air without being obvious about it. The scents of the plants and wet earth still dominated. Unless the miners were unusually rank, he doubted he would be able to … There was movement ahead.

He said to Ghatli and Ventl, “Get ready to run.”

“What?” Ghatli was startled, but Ventl tugged on her arm.

Behind them, the lead Cedar-rin snapped an order and the drones all drew their sickles. Ferns and branches crashed ahead, a frenzy of waving greenery as whatever it was gave up the effort to be stealthy. The Cedar-rin charged forward, roaring. Moon swept Ghatli off the road as Ventl and his friends scrambled out of the way. Moon shouted, “Run!” and Ghatli jumped back onto the road to comply, but one drone had stayed behind to block them. It lifted its sickle menacingly and Moon dove for its legs and knocked it off the road.

He heard Ghatli yell, “Come on, Moon!” and her lighter footsteps merged with the fishers’ heavier thumps as they ran. Moon twisted away just as the drone brought its sickle down. Then he rolled into the heavy foliage and shifted.

Moon leapt upward into the branches before the confused drone could see anything but a dark blur. He swarmed up to the mid-layer of the canopy and leapt from branch to branch, trying to keep the disturbance to a minimum. He wanted a good look at these miners and what they were digging for.

He reached the upper part of the road again and saw the Cedar-rin fighting something big and white that moved too fast to see. Then whatever it was paused for an instant, and Moon got a good view.

It was spider-like, taller than the lead Cedar-rin, covered with long white fur, with a round body in the center and three broad legs on each side. He thought there were limbs under the round center part, and probably a mouth, judging by the drones’ injuries, but he couldn’t see it from here. It leapt at the drones again and Moon climbed further up the tree.

As the branches grew too thin to support him he pushed upward and snapped his wings out, and flapped to get high enough to catch the wind. He wasn’t worried about being spotted; the jungle was too thick to allow for much visibility, and everyone was too busy to look up at the moment anyway.

It was good flying weather, the overcast breaking up toward the east and letting the sun gleam on the lake. There was a town along the shore, in a cove some distance down from the trading dock. The houses were built on stilts, standing in the shallows, boats docked beneath them, and there were berms fencing off shallow ponds for rice fields nearby. That must be the town of the fishers and reed-growers. Moon flew further up the rounded hills, able to spot the path by the lighter color of the fern trees that shaded it, and then to trace the more open channel of the trade route. But he didn’t need to follow it very far; the excavation was obvious.

Not far ahead a series of hills like rounded cylinders surrounded a wide valley, and in it much of the trees and brush had been stripped away and lay in rotting piles. The white spidery miners were easy to spot, moving over the bare ground to and from a crevasse they were carving out near the center. Moon settled into a slow circle, high enough up that he could be mistaken for a large carrion bird.

They were transporting the dirt and rock by using a system of ropes strung across the valley, supported at intervals by scaffolds about ten paces or so high. Big slings or baskets were hauled up from the crevasse on the ropes, and then run along them to the edge of the valley and dumped. Then the empties were hauled back on a separate system. The rubble formed huge piles of debris at the edge of the jungle. The baskets moved smoothly along the ropes, as if they were on wheels, and it seemed to take little effort to push them along. No, those aren’t ropes, Moon thought, circling again.

On the far side of the valley a group of miners were building a second system, probably because the debris piles at the end of the first one were growing too large. As Moon angled around he could see that they weren’t stringing rope, but extruding it like a branchspider’s web from somewhere beneath their bodies, and knitting it into place with their lower limbs. The stuff must be as slick as glass, and the big baskets and scaffolds were probably made from it as well.

The crevasse itself was about fifty paces long and growing, and he couldn’t tell how deep it was. He also couldn’t see anything of what they were digging for. They seemed to be discarding the rock and dirt and not even sorting through it, the way metal and gem miners did, so perhaps they hadn’t uncovered what they were really looking for yet.

Which doesn’t explain how the Cedar-rin knew what it was, Moon thought. No, as far as Ghatli knew, no one had seen the excavation and if they had, they hadn’t survived long enough to talk about it. But the word from the fishers that a strange species they called miners was inexplicably digging in the hills had been enough to bring the Cedar-rin. There had to be more to it than that.

Moon judged that he had run out of time for sightseeing. He turned away, caught the wind again and arrowed back down to see if the Cedarrin had killed the miner yet and how Ghatli and the others were doing.

He flew above the path until he saw rapid movement in the canopy, as something large—maybe two somethings—climbed through it. A little further down, faint twitches in the foliage told him something was running. The gap between the two spots was narrowing rapidly. Uh oh, Moon thought. He shot ahead and dove down into the upper canopy.

Moon climbed down the branches until he heard the pounding of running footsteps. He shifted to groundling and dropped out of the trees onto the edge of the path. Several figures came into view, Ghatli and Ventl, Ventl’s two fisher friends, and two of the Cedar-rin drones bringing up the rear. One of the drones had its armor half-ripped off, bloody streaks torn through the flesh and clothing beneath. Moon yelled, “Don’t stop! It’s getting closer!”

“Moon!” Ghatli panted in protest as she passed him. She was pushing Ventl along; none of the fishers were particularly fast on their feet.

“Keep going,” he told her. They passed him, the limping drone grimly determined to keep its wounded companion moving.

The fleeing groundlings pounded away, down the slope and out of sight. A moment later, two miners crashed into view. They didn’t hesitate, but charged toward Moon. They knocked down small saplings and tore through the fern trees. Their motion was fast but odd, all six legs moving in a concert that was strangely not awkward.

Moon waited, thinking about distance and relative strength and how these things were supposed to be sentient and maybe a smart predator might have taken alarm by now. Or maybe they just assumed he was frozen with terror. The first one drew close enough to crouch and leap.

Moon had a moment to see the mouth, which was round and huge and lined with what must be hundreds of scissor-like projections. The two additional limbs to either side were long and slender, with at least six agile fingers.

Then he surged forward and shifted.

He sliced one arm off with the first sweep of the claws of his right hand, grabbed the other arm and used it to pull himself up and rip both sets of foot claws across the softer skin around the mouth. It happened too fast for the creature to know it was in pain; its teeth snapped at him as it tried to extend the musculature around the mouth. That was when its guts started to fall out.

Moon flipped up between one set of legs and landed on its back as the creature collapsed under him. The second miner was still coming at him though that was mostly momentum; it flared its legs to try to halt itself.

Curious about how to kill one from the top, Moon pounced onto its back and dug the disemboweling claws on his heels into its fur. The skin was tougher up here but his claws still sunk into it. The miner stood up on the three legs of its left side to try to bash him into a tree trunk. Moon sprang up onto one of its extended legs, wrapped himself around it, and twisted.

He felt the joint pop as the miner flipped around and grabbed for him. The creature realized a moment later why that wasn’t a good idea as Moon ripped open its underbelly before it could extend its mouth.

As it collapsed into a steaming heap, Moon bounded up the path. He wanted to see where the other surviving Cedar-rin were.

He reached the road and slowed down as he neared the site of the initial attack, prepared to shift back to groundling if he sensed movement.

But bodies were scattered along the road and the torn-up ground to either side. Some were bitten nearly in half, some had limbs missing, blood pooling on the mossy ground and drawing clouds of buzzing carrion insects. There was only one dead miner; it lay to one side of the path, on its back with its vulnerable underbelly slashed open. The other two miners must have arrived unexpectedly, while the Cedar-rin were still busy with the first. Moon could tell from the way the bodies lay that they had been trying to retreat in order, but had become separated. Singly, they had been easy prey.

He found the male sprawled on his back across the body of the smallest drone, as if they had died back to back, or the leader had tried to protect it. Moon sat on his heels to check the drone trapped under him, hoping it was alive, but the torn flesh at its throat was already cooling.

He sat there for a time, twitching his spines to drive off the insects. He could have prevented this if he had shifted to fight the miners with them, but they would have turned on him next. He was fairly certain they would have. It was what had happened every time he had done something like that in the past.

He was tired of looking at dead groundlings, tired of feeling sorry for them. The Fell had hunted them through the streets of Saraseil, dug through the walls of their houses. There was a raw lump of emotion in his chest, boiling and expanding until it felt as if it was going to burst out through his scales.

He wanted to make somebody else feel sorry.

Moon sensed movement and lifted his head to see three more miners standing on the road, watching him. He bared his fangs and flicked his spines. “Just in time,” he growled.

Moon returned to the caravanserai a short while later, as the sun moved into afternoon somewhere behind the heavy clouds. He had had to take time to wash the blood off his scales in the stream, and he had caught a big flightless bird in a clearing and eaten it down to the bones. With his belly finally full, it was hard not to just find a good spot to curl up and sleep, but he wanted to know what was happening at the caravanserai.

He walked into the house to hear anxious voices and found the main room crowded with fishers and a scatter of other groundlings. The badly injured Cedar-rin drone lay on the floor on a bed of blankets, its bloody armor in a discarded pile and its wounds being tended by a green skinny groundling who looked like a stick insect, complete with large multi-faceted eyes. It had two sets of hands branching out from its forearms, more like feelers than fingers, delicate but adept.

The other drone sat nearby, its shoulders slumped in exhaustion. It was still wearing its battered armor, but had removed the shoulder and arm pieces on one side and was pressing a cloth to the ragged scratches there. Then Ghatli turned away from the round stove with a bowl of steaming water in her hands and nearly dropped it. “Moon!”

Everyone stared at him, startled. The upright drone made an abortive reach for its sickle, then just slumped in despair again. Ventl said, “We thought you were dead!”

Moon shook his head. “They chased me, but I lost them in the jungle.” He stepped around a couple of gaping fishers and took a seat on a reed stool someone had just vacated. He nodded toward the Cedar-rin. “Did they say what they were after from the miners?”

“Not yet,” Ghatli said. “Perhaps they will.” She handed the bowl to the insect groundling and lightly touched Moon’s forehead. “You’re bleeding. Did you fight them?”

He managed not to flinch away. “No, I fell down a ravine trying to get away.” He had cuts across his scalp, and bruises rising on his arms and legs and chest, blue-purple against the dark bronze, visible through the tears in his already ragged shirt and pants. Any injuries he suffered in his scaled form transferred to his groundling skin when he shifted. The damage was minor, but three of the creatures at once had been a bit of a challenge. Invigorating, but a challenge.

The insect groundling focused its glittering eyes on him, a concentrated stare that made his insides twitch and almost activated his prey reflex. In a deep buzzing voice, it said in Altanic, “You require aid?”

“No, thank you,” he told it.

As the insect groundling turned back to the unconscious drone, Ghatli said, “Moon, that is Physician Iscre. And these two are An, and its relative Na, who are of the family Tskkall of the Rin of Cedar.” An ducked its head, apparently embarrassed. Ghatli added, “Moon delayed the pursuit of the miners so we could all live. Perhaps An will tell us now what the miners are digging for that the Cedar-rin were so curious about. No one here will say where we heard it.” She glanced around the room and got nods and various gestures of assent from the others.

In a voice lighter than the male Cedar-rin’s, An said, “It doesn’t matter if you tell anyone. My kin …” It hesitated, but then lifted a hand in despair. “We came to see if the miners were really digging in these hills. I don’t know why they want what is there. But it is the resting place of our ancestors.”

Moon hadn’t been expecting that. Neither had Ghatli, evidently, or anyone else. She said, “Your people are buried there? Since when?”

An said, “More than two hundred turns ago the Rin had a city there.”

Everyone still stared in blank astonishment and disbelief. Ventl said, “Why don’t you live there now?”

An betrayed a trace of annoyance. “It is a dead city. Do your people live atop graves?”

Ventl exchanged an uneasy look with one of the other fishers. He said, “Apparently we’re as good as living atop your graves!”

“We pick fruit from the trees on those hills,” one of the others said, shocked, and there were mutters of horror. “No wonder the traders tell stories of ghosts and strange voices.”

Moon concentrated, remembering the landscape as he had seen it from the air. The uniformly rounded hills had formed a semi-circle around this side of the lake, centering on the same natural bay that the caravanserai was built above, the spot where the fishers had their dock for traders and travelers. The dock with the old statue that had had a Cedar-rin’s scales carved on it. After so many turns, the jungle and grass and dirt might easily cover a large ruined city, but he was surprised the fishers had never encountered more traces of the foundations.

Ghatli’s ear tufts were twitching. “There must be something buried with your ancestors that the miners want. Precious metals, or gems, or something. Is that it?”

The evasive expression that crossed An’s face wasn’t too obvious, but it was clear it didn’t spend a lot of time lying and deceiving people when it was at home. It said, “I don’t know. But it seems most likely.”

An knew something but it obviously had no intention of telling them anything more. Which was understandable. Moon didn’t think they would have gotten this far if the male Cedar-rin had still been alive. Moon asked, “Do you know anything about the miners? Where they came from? How they found out your dead were buried here?”

An frowned, the expression intensified on its square face. “I don’t know how the miners found out. I don’t think the primaries knew. Kall—” He stopped, swallowed, and went on. “Kall, the one who led us here, was our primary.” He lifted his hand to gesture, winced, and set it carefully down on his knee again. “The location of our dead cities are not spoken of to anyone outside the Rin. And they aren’t spoken of lightly within it. I knew there was one near this shore of the lake, but not where, until we were sent to see if the rumors were true.”

“But have you ever heard of a species like the miners before?” Moon persisted. He knew a great deal more about the miners’ anatomy now, but he didn’t think anyone could figure out their motives unless they knew how they lived and where they were from. “They’re fairly distinctive.”

“No,” An admitted. “They sound like horror stories to entertain the pods.”

Moon sat back. It was disappointing, but he was fairly sure An wasn’t lying now. Ghatli let her breath out in a gusty sigh and said, “I assume other Cedar-rin will be coming to see what happened to you when you don’t return.”

An’s mouth set in a thin line, as it debated how much to say. “Don’t try to stop them, and they will leave you alone.”

“Your primary Kall threatened us to get us to take him to the miners,” Ghatli pointed out. “I could’ve given you a map. This is a caravanserai. We have maps to spare. Giving people directions is a large part of what we do every day.”

Earnest now, An said, “He thought it might be the fishers themselves who were digging, and the miners were just a story.” It looked down at the injured Na. With its armor removed, it was easier to tell they were drones. Na didn’t have any nipples or anything else that looked like a sexual characteristic. The doctor-groundling Iscre had just finished spreading a waxy substance over the last of Na’s wounds, and the substance hardened immediately, forming a tight bandage. An said, “Now we know the truth, and the others will read our anima and know it too.”

“Read your anima, that’s good,” Ghatli said and pressed a hand to her head in frustration. “Hopefully they’ll stop to do that before they decide we did for all your friends in some violent outburst.” The other fishers muttered darkly.

“They won’t—” An began, but footsteps creaking on the reed floor of the house’s entrance interrupted it.

Three fishers crowded into the doorway. One said, “We found a dead miner!”

Someone said, “At least the Cedar-rin killed one of the pestilent creatures.”

Annoyed, Ventl said, “We know, we were there! What were you doing so far up the hill route? I told you to stay away, it’s dangerous.”

“We weren’t on the hill route, we were on the east curve path, not ten pad-lengths up it,” one protested. “The miner’s legs were there, laid out in a circle, but there was no middle.”

Moon looked away to hide a wince. He probably shouldn’t have done that. Ventl stared. Someone said, “A carrion predator must have done it, with a miner that the Cedar-rin killed.”

Everyone looked relieved at this suggestion. Everyone but An, who frowned in doubt, and started to speak. Moon asked hurriedly, “When will the other Cedar-rin come after you?”

“Soon. They know what happened to us.” The other drone Na stirred and whimpered and An reached down to take its hand.

Ghatli caught that. “What do you mean?”

An shrugged a little. “The primaries are all aware of each other. When our primary Kall … The others will know something is wrong and come for us.”

Moon had wondered about that, with that comment about the Cedarrin reading An’s anima to know the truth of what had happened. “So they can … hear your thoughts from a distance?”

An tried to explain, “No, not like that. For drones it’s just feelings, intuitions. But the primaries know more. It’s hard to describe.”

But Ghatli nodded. “I’ve heard of this before. Some species have mental connections, that let them communicate over long distances.” She glanced at Moon. “There are rumors the Fell can do this. Did they know of it in Saraseil?”

“I don’t know.” Moon got up and stepped away. The mention of Saraseil was like a quick stab in the eye. “The people in Saraseil knew a lot of things about the Fell, but … some weren’t true.”

“Ah, well.” The others were staring but Ghatli quickly said, “It means the Cedar-rin will be here by morning, at latest. The weather is so calm any trip across the lake will be quick and easy.”

An seemed encouraged by this prospect but no one else did.

One of the fishers said, “Should you leave, Ghatli? If the miners and the Cedar-rin fight …”

“They haven’t come down here yet,” Ventl said, not looking at her. “But they might.”

“They might have at any moment before now.” Ghatli rubbed the wrinkled skin of her forehead. “I’m not leaving until I have to. I’ll stay until the Cedar-rin come. Perhaps they can drive the miners away. If they can’t … I’ll go.”

Moon left the others while they were discussing setting guards and trying to convince Ghatli to flee. He climbed up to his cubby and lay there for a time, listening to the house calm down around him. He felt different. He had felt different since leaving the dying Saraseil behind him, but this was the first time he had let himself think about how.

Since he had first come out of the forests and tried to live as a groundling, there had been a wall between his real self and what he had pretended to be. He had still needed to be that other winged self, when he had to travel swiftly, to hunt, to explore places that were dangerous or difficult to get to. But for these past several turns, when he was pretending to be a groundling, it was like he had fooled himself more than anyone else. People had been suspicious of him, he had made mistakes, and he had resented it even more because in some part of him he really believed he wasn’t lying.

When the Fell had come to Saraseil, that wall had come apart like the city’s inadequate defenses. He had tried to get closer to the Fell because they had looked so much like him. He had been terrified that he was one of them. As soon as he had spoken to a ruler face to face, he had known this wasn’t true, that whatever he was, he wasn’t a Fell. But it had been too late by that point. And the effect seemed to be lingering.

His other self had felt so close to the surface today it was a shock that Ghatli and the others couldn’t see scales and claws through his ever-thinning skin.

He should leave, fly past the hills and the valley and the miners and on into Kish, past the high mountain ranges full of skylings where rumor said the Fell didn’t travel. Now, as the afternoon crept toward evening and the light lengthened, it would be a good time to go, to fly west into the sun with no one to see.

Except he didn’t appear to be doing that.

Moon woke when he felt the sun drop behind the distant hills. He had slept more deeply this time, with no dreams frightening or vivid enough to wake him. Either killing miners had been somehow calming or the clean sweet scent of the reed walls was soothing; maybe a combination of both.

The house had quieted somewhat and he made his way back down to the main room. Many of the other groundlings had left, and the few who were still here were half-asleep. An and Na lay on the floor asleep on the blanket pallet. Moon could hear two more groundlings, probably fishers, out in the entrance area, who must be standing guard.

He found Ghatli and Ventl in the attached room that was for cooking and eating, both sitting near the big cylindrical stove. They were picking at a pan of cooked fish and rice. The shared danger of the day seemed to have led them to repair their relationship. “Aren’t you hungry?” Ghatli asked Moon.

He was still full from the hunt but he took a pan from the stove anyway and sat on a stool nearby. Ghatli waited until he was settled, then said, “Ventl has a plan.”

“Does he,” Moon said, not enthusiastically. His short acquaintance with Ventl had done nothing to inspire confidence in Ventl’s plans.

Ventl said, “He won’t like it.” He took an empty pan and dumped the fish bones in a pail near the stove. “He’s the type.”

Moon swallowed a piece of fish. “What type is that?”

“Not to like plans,” Ventl said, darkly.

Ghatli said, “I don’t like your plan, either.” She told Moon, “He thinks he knows a way into the Cedar-rin’s dead city.”

Moon remembered to spit the bone out and not chew it. “That’s a surprise, because up until this afternoon he didn’t know the Cedar-rin had a dead city.”

Ghatli cocked her head in assent. “That’s what I said too, but I didn’t use the word ‘surprise.’ “She added, more thoughtfully, “He thinks he knows where an entrance is hidden.”

Moon eyed Ventl skeptically, but Ventl said, “This was turns and turns ago, when we were sprouts and the traders were clearing the hill route. I say ‘clearing’ because stretches of it were already there, paved with smooth stones, it just had to be dug out and connected up again. On the east side of Bowl Tower hill, a narrow piece of the road branched off and went down a ravine, and we followed it with the workers, and it went toward a cave in the side of the hill. The workers said it was too dangerous to go in, and it did stink of predators. They said that the cave was a coincidence, and the road so old it was there before the hill.” Ventl shook a fishbone for emphasis. “But when you know those hills cover a city, I bet that cave was an old entrance to it. It might still lead into the streets, depending on how much filling in the Cedar-rin did when they abandoned it.”

He could be right, but the cave might also dead-end in a wall of dirt. Moon said, “So you think someone could get in and attack the miners from inside the city.”

Ventl said, “It’s a good plan.”

Moon had to point out, “Except the miners are probably even more dangerous underground, in narrow caves, than they are in the open.”

Ghatli sighed. “I said that too. But he means to tell the Cedar-rin.”

Moon ate another piece of fish and didn’t comment. If the miners and the Cedar-rin fought each other to the death, it might be the best thing for the fishers and the traders. Except that the Cedar-rin seemed to have been peaceful up until this point, and no one knew what the miners meant to do with whatever they were digging for.

It was annoying that the Cedar-rin must know exactly what the miners wanted, it was just that An didn’t want to tell anyone.

“Will you leave in the morning, Moon?” Ghatli asked him. She was watching him carefully, but it was hard to read her expression. “The hill route is blocked, but you could go along the lakeshore and find other places to wait until it’s open again.”

Moon shrugged, and absently stirred his fish bones. “I’ll think about it.”

“My thought is … You are the only one here who isn’t afraid.”

Moon went still. The sense of being caught made his heart stutter. He forced himself take a breath, to keep poking at his food, as if looking for fish pieces among the rice.

But Ghatli continued, “I know it’s because of … the place you have just come from and what must have happened there. This must all seem like not much trouble at all, compared to that.”

Ventl whispered to her, “What place?” and she elbowed him to silence.

Relief ran through Moon’s skin, like cold water. Ghatli thought the horror of his experience in Saraseil had left him in shock, and numb to the danger the miners and the Cedar-rin represented. He decided she probably wasn’t entirely wrong. He said, again, “I’ll think about it.”

Ghatli’s mouth twisted in dissatisfaction and she picked up a stick to poke at the fire in the stove. “I feel we’re all being foolish and we should all pick up and leave.”

“And go where?” Ventl said wearily. “Who would have us?”

There wasn’t much to say after that.

Moon took a turn at watch with the other fishers, but nothing came near the caravanserai under the cover of darkness. Ventl was worried about the fisher town, but it had a large gong that clocked the hours and acted as a weather alarm for lake travelers. The distant echo of it rang at the right intervals through the night.

It sounded out of turn just before dawn, nearly half an hour off by the gears of the caravanserai’s water clock, a subtle way of giving the alarm. Ghatli climbed up through the house and out the little trapdoor in the roof to try to see what was wrong. Moon went with her, mentally chafing at the necessity, when he could have been aloft and back down with a report already. His bruises and cuts had already mostly healed, but that wasn’t a characteristic groundlings usually associated with shapeshifters, so he wasn’t too worried anyone would notice.

The bundles of reeds that formed the roof were easy to balance on, and over the tree canopy they had a view of the edge of the stilt town where it curved into the cove. And the longboats that were crossing the water toward the caravanserai’s dock.

Ghatli swore in dismay. There were two boats visible and Moon counted thirty Cedar-rin or so aboard each. He said, “We need to get An and the other one out there.”

Ghatli turned and lunged for the trap door, shouting, “Ventl!”

Moon waited outside with Ghatli and Ventl while a couple of fishers helped An down from the doorway. An moved stiffly, more so than it had yesterday. While Na was judged still too hurt to move, it was alert and able to speak and had taken some food earlier. If the Cedar-rin faulted the way their wounded had been treated, then they were so unreasonable that there would be no talking to them.

There might be no talking to them anyway, Moon thought, watching the path with narrowed eyes.

The first of the boats must have landed before they got down from the roof, because Moon sensed movement in the jungle. “Here they come,” he told Ghatli and Ventl.

A few moments later three of the larger Cedar-rin that An had called primaries appeared, followed by a few dozen drones. Moon knew there were more off the path, hidden in the foliage, stealthily approaching.

The primaries stopped when they saw An, and all the drones, including the ones Moon could hear in the jungle, froze.

An stepped away from Ghatli and limped toward its people. The first primary came to meet it. Moon thought this primary was probably female, just from the shape of its body under the light armor. She was just as large as the one yesterday, but her square skull was more angled back, the lines of the large bones and the shape of her horns more elegant. She reached out and put her hand on An’s cheek. As if they were in the middle of a conversation, An said, “As you see. But we tried—”

“All you could,” the primary said. She looked toward Ghatli, then at Ventl and Moon. “We mean not to harm you. I am Eikenn, primary of the family Tskeikenn of the Rin of Cedar. I see you are not our enemies.”

Ghatli made a noise of pure relief. “That’s good.” And then after an awkward pause, “Can I ask what you mean to do?”

Eikenn hesitated, and Moon wondered if she was somehow consulting the others. Then Eikenn said, “No.”

“Fair enough.” Ghatli exchanged a look with Ventl. “We have information you may want.”

Moon winced inwardly. He had been hoping they had changed their minds about telling the Cedar-rin about the cave Ventl had seen. As a way to get rid of the Cedar-rin more quickly, he didn’t think it would work.

Eikenn just stared at Ghatli, apparently waiting for the information. Then one of the Cedar-rin cried out in shock.

Moon turned with everyone else and looked toward the top of the clearing where the path curved down from the jungle. A Cedar-rin primary walked down that way, ducking past the fern fronds that extended over the … It wasn’t just a Cedar-rin primary, it was Kall, the Cedar-rin primary who had come here yesterday. Kall, who was dead. That’s … different, Moon thought. Horrible and different.

“Kall,” An whispered, its expression turning from shock to horror. “He … I can’t … It’s his body, but his mind is not there …”

Eikenn’s face worked, her lips drew back in a grimace of fury; it was the first real expression Moon had seen her make. “This is impossible. This is an abomination.”

Following Kall was a fisher Moon didn’t recognize. But Ventl and the fishers with Ghatli did. One started toward him, calling out, “Benl! We thought you were dead—”

Moon caught the fisher by the wiry fur on the back of his neck before he took another step. “He is dead.” Moon could smell the corruption that drifted toward them on the damp air. “They both are.” Moon had had to lift Kall to check the drone under him, and there had been no breath or pulse of life in his body.

“You’re sure?” Ventl demanded. “Benl was the first one to go try to see what the miners were doing. Perhaps—”

“No, this is a trick,” Ghatli muttered, aghast. “For them to appear at this moment—”

Yes, it’s a trick, Moon thought. But how did the miners do it? The possibilities made his skin go cold.

The Cedar-rin stared in silence, their expressions horror-stricken or dumbfounded or blank with shock. They clearly knew Kall was dead, probably the same way Eikenn had known, through their mental connections, but the realization had frozen them in place.

Kall walked toward them slowly, his footing sure on the grassy mud of the clearing. He carried something that looked like a woven basket. The dead fisher, Benl, carried one too, and as he entered the clearing he turned toward Ventl and Ghatli and the others.

The nearest drones dropped back to form a half-circle. An stayed where it was, as if it was rooted in place. Eikenn regained control of her face and voice, and said evenly, “Kall, what has been done to you? Your connection to us is severed. And your body is so damaged.” Clearly she knew this was a trap, but she seemed more inclined to spring it than flee it.

Kall said, “I have word. They don’t wish to fight.” The Cedar-rin primaries didn’t speak with much inflection anyway, so there was no real difference in his voice to Moon’s ears. Kall held out the basket. “They want the being who killed their scouts yesterday. If you give it to them, they will leave the rest of us alone.”

Moon hissed in dismay. He thought, You idiot. And how long would it be before Ghatli and everyone who was in the caravanserai realized that Moon was the only one who had been gone long enough, the only one who had been alone in the jungle, the one who had come back covered with minor injuries.

Ventl stared in confusion. “But that was the Cedar-rin, wasn’t it? That Kall and the others. They killed the miners.”

Ghatli shook her head, confused. “I don’t …”

Benl still moved toward the astonished fishers. This close the basket he carried looked like it was made of some kind of webbing, and not straw or reed as Moon had first thought. Webbing. Like the webbing the miners extruded. One of the fishers called, “Benl, what happened? Where have you been?”

Another fisher caught her arm to draw her back. Sounding frightened, he said, “Moon is right, Benl’s dead. I can smell it too now.”

Moon’s eye caught movement and he shoved a fisher aside and stepped forward. Yes, the basket was moving. He yelled, “Those things they’re holding, that’s the trap! Don’t touch it! Get back!”

He didn’t expect anyone except maybe Ghatli to listen to him but his conviction must have sounded in his voice. Fishers scattered away from Benl. Ghatli bolted for the house. And then the basket Kall held burst open.

It rained tiny white creatures in the air, glittering and spidery. Eikenn shouted, “Kill them! Don’t let them touch you!”

Moon resigned himself to shifting. Benl’s basket was a heartbeat from bursting and his scales might provide just enough protection from whatever was in it. But before he could shift, Ghatli yelled, “Moon!” and threw a metal bucket at his head.

Moon caught it and swung it, smacked Benl in the face and knocked him flat. The fisher let go of the basket as he fell and Moon pounced, slamming the bucket down on it.

He pinned it with his weight but the bucket jerked under him. The basket must have burst and the bucket was now full of whatever those things were. The drones had surged forward, two holding Kall while the others stamped and sliced at the white spider-like things. One ran past and Moon had a good look: it was a miniature miner, tiny and complete in every detail. Then a drone leapt to swing its sickle and sliced the creature in half.

The mini-miners inside the bucket surged again and Moon struggled to hold it down, thinking for a moment that he might have to shift anyway. Then Ventl ran up beside him and added his weight to Moon’s. Ghatli arrived a moment later, waving over two fishers, who carried a large flat rock. She said, “Here, use this.”

Moon and Ventl held the bucket by the sides as the fishers set the rock atop it. It sunk a little into the wet grass and stopped bucking, as if the inhabitants knew they were stuck now. It made Moon’s skin creep. He looked toward Benl, who lay there as if dazed, and knew it was going to get worse.

Eikenn strode over. The drones circled around to check the packed dirt and grass for more of the creatures. Kall was surrounded by drones, but he hadn’t moved. Eikenn said, “What is the purpose of this? What being do they speak of?”

“I don’t know,” Ghatli answered. She turned to look down at the unresponsive Benl, and shivered in dismay. This close, it was possible to see the fur was sunk in around his eyes and mouth, showing that the flesh beneath had begun to decay. “Some fishers found a dead miner last night, but we thought it must be one that died later, after your people fought them. I would rather know why two people we thought dead are—were—walking and talking.” She crouched down to look more closely at Benl. Moon said, “Careful. Let me do it.”

Ghatli stood and he stepped around her and used his foot to roll Benl over. Everyone but Eikenn flinched backward. Moon half-snarled.

Buried in the back of Benl’s head was one of the miniature miners. The way it was sunk into his fur, its legs must extend down through his skull.

Ghatli made a choked noise. Ventl gasped, “These things meant to kill us and eat out our brains.”

Moon wished that was an exaggeration but he was afraid Ventl was right for once.

Eikenn whipped around and snapped an order to the drones. One stepped behind the motionless Kall and used its sickle to slice his armor open. Moon didn’t have a good view but he saw the moment when the drone grimaced in disgust. The miner must be buried in Kall’s neck, below the curving horns that protected the back of his skull.

Ghatli and the fishers were locked in place, as if their bodies had turned to stone. Then Ventl said, “Kill it.”

Moon figured later that what happened next would probably have happened anyway, no matter what they had done. The timing was just a coincidence. But as one of the fishers drew a scaling knife and stabbed it down into the thing buried in Benl’s head, a dozen miners burst out of the upper slope of the jungle.

Fishers scattered in fear and drones surged forward. Moon shoved Ghatli and the nearest fisher toward the house and shouted, “Get inside!”

The miners went for the drones and the primaries first, but more drones poured up the path from the lake. A miner bounded toward the retreating fishers and Moon lunged into its path. It pounced on him, rictus jaw wide and arms reaching. Under the cover of its body Moon shifted and ripped with both feet and hand claws. Guts spilled out onto him and he shifted back to groundling and rolled out from under the miner as it collapsed. This is going to be tricky, he thought.

Miners tore across the clearing as drones slashed at their legs. Eikenn was on top of one, driving her sickle through a leg joint. Another miner darted at the house and Moon grabbed a rock and flung it. It bounced off the miner’s back and the creature charged for him.

There were too many Cedar-rin and miners fighting in the jungle so he ran past the front of the house and around the corner. He ducked under a limb of the large tree that supported the structure and flattened himself against the reed wall.

The miner tried to outthink him by leaping onto the wall as it came around the corner, perhaps meaning to get above him. But it landed half atop Moon and he shifted and popped its leg joint. Three more miners followed it, and three more died in quick succession, with limbs torn off and guts ripped open. Moon was far more expert on killing miners after his rampage yesterday and not nearly as blind with anger; he was able to dispose of them far more efficiently.

He got tossed into the jungle at one point by a miner’s death convulsion and was almost seen by a group of drones. Fortunately their backs were to him as they hacked at an upended miner and Moon was able to shift to groundling before anyone saw him. He ran back around the house to the clearing and saw the battle was nearly over.

Severed miner legs and a few arms were strewn across the grass and dirt. There were four dead miners still mostly whole, one on its back with a sickle buried deep in its open mouth. Dead drones also lay beside them, and one of the primaries sprawled unmoving. There weren’t as many dead as Moon would have expected after seeing the aftermath of the battle yesterday. Clearly the Cedar-rin had learned from that encounter too, and An hadn’t been exaggerating about their ability to rapidly and silently share knowledge.

Other drones huddled on the ground, alive but badly wounded. An had survived, Moon was glad to see, and was helping another wounded drone remove its torn armor. Eikenn was alive as well, striding across the clearing with her armor splashed with miner blood.

Ghatli charged out of the house’s doorway and slid to an abrupt halt near Moon. She looked him up and down. “Are you hurt?” she demanded. “How are you alive?”

Moon shrugged. His clothes were wet and stinking with miner guts. It was an unfortunate consequence of shifting, that whatever was on his scales transferred to his skin and clothes whenever he changed forms. He couldn’t say he had run away to avoid the fight this time, and the only other option was that he had tripped and somehow fallen inside a dead miner. He had learned from bitter experience that it was better not to try to explain unexplainable things. “I’m lucky.”

The other fishers followed Ghatli out of the house more cautiously, and the Physician Iscre pushed past them, carrying a satchel of its medicines and tools. Ghatli pivoted, staring around the clearing, and said, “But where is Ventl?”

“Ventl?” Startled, Moon looked around. The only dead fisher in the clearing was Benl, whose body still lay undisturbed. The miners hadn’t even bothered to overturn the bucket and rock holding down the miniature miners. “He wasn’t with you?”

“He stayed out here to fight.” Ghatli ran past him, scanning the clearing frantically. “He isn’t here!”

Moon saw who else wasn’t here: Kall was gone. Ghatli headed toward Eikenn, who stood with three other primaries. Ghatli said, “One of our people is missing! Did you see what happened?”

Eikenn turned toward her. “They have taken Kall—Kall’s body, and seven of our drones who yet live. We go after them.”

Ghatli said, “I’ll go with you.”

Moon hissed under his breath. “Ghatli, you can’t—”

“I can,” she said, and called to one of the fishers. “Get my weapon!”

Eikenn eyed Moon. “You have no weapon. How did you, a softskin, fight these creatures?”

“It’s none of your shitting business!” Ghatli shouted at her, drawing the startled gaze of every drone in the clearing. “We must go after them now! If we hurry—”

“You will only slow us down,” Eikenn said, betraying a trace of irritation. Considering how much emotion the primaries usually displayed, it probably meant she was furious.

Eikenn started to turn away, and Ghatli said, “I know a way into your ruined city.” A fisher brought her a short metal spear with two prongs on the end. It was clearly for using on fish, and might be effective on a large lizard. Against the miners, it wasn’t much better than a belt knife. Moon rubbed his forehead wearily and swore. Ghatli hefted the weapon and added, “I was going to draw a map but I’ll take you there myself.”

Eikenn stopped. Turning back to Ghatli, she said, “Very well. Lead us.”

The fishers immediately protested, half of those gathered around wanting to accompany Ghatli and the others urging her not to go. Ghatli shook them all off and said, “No, stay here and help tend the wounded. And burn that mess!” She pointed at the bucket still covering the bundle of miniature miners. “I’ll be back. With Ventl.”

Eikenn didn’t seem to need to give orders. She headed for the path upslope, all the primaries and most of the drones breaking off to follow her, leaving only a few behind to help the wounded. Ghatli hurried to catch up with her.

One of the fishers anxiously asked Moon, “What are you going to do?”

Moon let his breath out. This attack might have happened anyway, but his deliberate assault on the miners yesterday clearly hadn’t helped. According to Kall, it was him they wanted. He said, “I’m going to do something stupid,” and followed the Cedar-rin.

Moon trailed after them long enough to see that Ghatli at least had no intention of leading the Cedar-rin straight up the path to the trade road. She took them to a narrower less-travelled way that branched off the main path and curved around the slope of one of the hills, then followed a ridge of rock upward. If Moon was guessing right, it would parallel the trade road as it curved to cross the valley, then turn off toward the cave Ventl had spoken of. If the cave proved to be a dead end, it would at least give the Cedar-rin a chance to come at the miners from a new direction.

Eikenn paused to send a primary and a group of drones up the main path, probably meaning them to be decoys, then followed Ghatli. The Cedar-rin were taking far more care, moving in groups with their weapons drawn, scouting through the jungle on both sides of the path. And they kept glancing at Moon, not quite suspiciously, but as if they were thinking of Eikenn’s unanswered question about how he had survived the battle. It made it more difficult for him to slip away. Finally he seized an opportunity and stepped behind a large clump of fern, and waited for the nearest drones’ footsteps to fade. Then he moved silently through the brush toward the closest tall tree.

He shifted, climbed it, and leapt into the air to flap steadily up toward the miner’s valley.

Moon flew up to the hills and was in time to see a large group of miners cross the churned-up dirt of the flat and vanish inside the crevasse. He didn’t see any sign of the prisoners or Kall, but they might already have been taken inside.

He did one high circle to check out the terrain. There were far fewer miners out in the valley, though the digging in the crevasse still continued. The second web system had been finished, though only four miners were using it to move dirt and rock, maybe the same ones who had been constructing it yesterday. There were still at least a dozen miners using the old web system to transport their baskets; the new one looked like a much better bet. It would have been easier to do this at night, but he didn’t have a choice. Ventl would surely be dead by then, if he wasn’t already.

Moon watched the miners long enough to memorize the pattern of their movements, then dropped behind the hill nearest the new web’s smaller but growing debris piles. He jumped from tree to tree, until he could work his way down toward the edge of the jungle. It took him long enough that Ghatli and the Cedar-rin might have reached the cave by now, if it was where he thought it was.

As he drew closer to the jungle’s edge the canopy thinned out and he went to the ground to creep between clumps of ferns and tall vegetation, tasting the air and listening for any hint of movement. Slipping out of that cover and into the gaps between the long piles of rock debris was tricky; fortunately his scales were nearly the same black as the freshly turned dirt. He made certain to get as much of that dirt as possible on him as he crawled between the piles; he hadn’t seen any sign that the miners were scent-hunters, but since the dirt was convenient he might as well take advantage of it.

Moon crept to the last debris pile, making sure he was on the right side of it. He had watched the process of dumping the baskets enough to know this was just barely possible. It wouldn’t have been, if the miners had their eyes on top of their bodies instead of between their front legs.

A miner pulled its basket closer. At this distance Moon could see the harness made of web that the miner used to haul the basket along and keep it steady. Moon flattened himself against the debris pile as the miner tipped the basket up, dirt and pebbles tumbling out. When the basket was between him and the miner, Moon scrambled lightly up the pile and rolled into the basket.

Unlike the other web-producing predators he had encountered, the miners’ web was slick and hard, obviously meant to build things and not to trap prey. Moon lay flat to try to distribute his weight as evenly as possible. He was counting on the fact that the miners were enormously strong and Moon didn’t weigh much compared to a basketful of rocks, especially in his lighter winged form. This one didn’t seem to notice, and turned to haul the basket back toward the excavation.

The basket moved rapidly across the valley, jerking a little when it passed through the supporting scaffolds, and in moments it started to tip downward into the crevasse. Moon curled his legs under him and braced himself to leap out if he had to. Daylight faded as the basket moved faster and he caught glimpses of rough rock walls rising up. Then the other webs met in a junction and baskets slid and bumped along above him, but no miners appeared. Moon guessed they must tip the empty baskets into the shaft to slide down on their own, while the miners climbed down to get the filled ones and guide them up another branch of the web.

Shafts of bright light came from somewhere below him, and he had the sense of a much larger space than he had expected. This crevasse went a lot deeper than he had thought. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

Moon had to get out now, before the basket dropped down to where the miners were filling them. He twisted around and dug his claws into the bottom of the basket and ripped open a slit. He pulled it open enough to see a slanted stone slope in the shadows below. That would have to do. Hoping he wasn’t about to appear in front of an interested crowd of miners, he slipped out.

He landed on the steep slope and gripped it with his claws, finding purchase in what he realized was dressed stone, not smooth rock. The light was behind him and he twisted around to face it.

The bright shafts of illumination came from bundles of webbing that sparked and sizzled with light, as if they were burning without flames. Either the webbing itself was flammable or the miners had done something to it to cause this effect.

What the light was shining on made Moon just huddle there and stare.

The bundles of light cut through the shadow to reveal a city that should have been collapsed under tons of dirt. This should be a buried ruin, with miner tunnels drilled through the remnants. Instead it was all still here, the valley floor a roof over a section of a carefully preserved city.

The open space was ringed by tall, narrow pyramids, hundreds and hundreds of paces high. Moon was perched on the enormous sloping wall of one, and dark gaps between them showed that the city went on for some distance. At the feet of the pyramids were smaller structures, all square and blocky, like small houses. They were clustered thickly, with only narrow pathways between them. In the center there was a square open plaza.

Following the strands of the web, visible where the light reflected off it, Moon saw it led down across the lower part of the city to vanish among the smaller structures. The ceiling overhead was a smooth dome, unbroken except for the jagged opening the miners had carved out. The dome must have been constructed to cover the city, then concealed by turns of dirt and grass and jungle.

This meant Ventl’s tunnel might not be a dead end, but might lead deep enough into the ground to reach this city cavern, or at least its outskirts. Moon eased forward and started down the slope of the pyramid, his claws gripping the pitted stone. More empty baskets slid by on the webs overhead. A pyramid on the far side of the open area had a web system on its slope, with light bundles hanging from the strands and a few miners hauling up full baskets. But it was still too dark to spot any sign of the prisoners. Moon needed to get down to where those miners were digging; that was the only spot where he could see any activity.

As he climbed down the slope, Moon wondered, But why did the Cedarrin leave? This still looked like a perfectly functional city, in far better shape than some places Moon had lived. And they had taken such care to bury it in a way that left it intact. And what are the miners still digging for? Was there something buried under the city? This place had been deserted and concealed long before the fishers had arrived, long enough ago for its existence to be nothing more than a rumor connected with the rebuilding of the trade road. It smelled of rock and earth and somewhere water, like a cavern; he didn’t scent any rot. The Cedar-rin dead interred here must be nothing but dried bones.

Maybe the miners wanted the bones.

The shadows grew deeper as Moon climbed down to the street level. The slanted wall ended in a narrow path, barely four long paces wide, that led off through the blocky buildings. There was no room for wagons or draft animals and it would have been barely wide enough for two primaries to pass side by side. Moon followed it, feeling his way in the dark, heading across the cluster of houses toward the base of the pyramid where the webs had ended and the light bundles were concentrated. He heard sounds of digging, the grinding of rock, an occasional thump as something heavy was moved, but with the confusing echoes it was hard to tell the direction.

The buildings were all fairly small, with steps leading up to them, and doorways and windows blocked in by stone. It was impossible to say if they had been dwellings or places that sold goods or storehouses or what. It would make sense if this area was all some sort of market and the homes were in the pyramids, but he knew from experience that it was often hard to guess how groundlings or other species lived based on just their dwelling places. The truth was usually odder than anything he could imagine.

Moon reached the last house and cautiously peered around the corner. The path fed into a much wider avenue running along the base of the nearest pyramid. This was where most of the light bundles were, and the webs with their sliding baskets passed overhead and down into the space directly in front of the pyramid. It had a doorway, big and square and framed by heavy stone lintels and pillars. Until recently, it had been walled up by stone blocks, just like every other door Moon had seen. But now the blocks had been broken through until there was enough space for miners to walk in and out. They dragged out baskets of dirt and broken pavement, then attached them to the lower branch of the web system. It snaked away, supported by more of the glittering scaffolds, and ran down the avenue to disappear between the smaller structures. Two miners walked along it, hauling baskets of debris away from the pyramid.

Moon hissed, frustrated. At least ten miners were loading baskets, not counting those who had just left to haul their loads away. He tasted the air carefully. The miners didn’t have much scent, and neither had the Cedar-rin, but he could just detect a more distinctive odor of fur. It was in the slight current of air coming from the doorway the miners had broken open. Ventl must be in there somewhere.

So Moon was going to have to get past the miners. But taking on ten at once wouldn’t go well. And he had meant to try not to kill any; if the others found any ripped open bodies, they would know he was down here. If they had sent Kall and Benl, or what was left of Kall and Benl, after Moon, he must have made them angry enough that they might just drop everything and start looking for him. But he couldn’t see any other way.

All the miners suddenly froze in place. Moon froze too, trying to blend into the wall of the little house. But he hadn’t moved, they couldn’t have heard him.

Then the miners dropped their baskets and charged across the avenue and into the maze of buildings. Moon flinched back against the wall, but they didn’t come near him. They cut straight across the houses, climbing over the blocky roofs, squeezing through the narrow pathways. It was baffling, but at least it cleared the way through the broken doors for him.

Then he heard the clash of metal weapons. The Cedar-rin, he thought, exasperated. Somehow the miners had heard them enter the city.

Moon climbed the wall of the house to the flat roof. It gave him a better vantage point to watch the miners, but he couldn’t see the Cedar-rin. Ventl’s tunnel access must have led them through some passage on the far side of the city.

Moon struggled with indecision. He should look for the prisoners while he had the chance. But if Ghatli was still with the Cedar-rin … He didn’t want to rescue Ventl only to find that he had let Ghatli be killed.

None of the miners seemed to be paying attention to anything but the Cedar-rin somewhere ahead of them. Moon dug his claws into the flat stone roof and extended his wings. He jumped up, used his wings for an extra boost, and landed on the roof of a house with a better view.

The Cedar-rin had just entered the plaza at the center of the city, spilling into it from one of the narrow pathways. The space was deeply shadowed but the Cedar-rin took advantage of its size as the miners charged in. They mobbed the first two miners and slashed at their legs. A primary rolled under one to stab it from beneath. More drones rushed to block a pathway, trapped the miners in it and forced them to climb the houses and leap down onto the Cedar-rin’s sickles.

But how did the miners know they were here in the first place? Moon wondered. He hadn’t heard or scented anything, and he hadn’t spotted any miner sentries anywhere. If the miners knew the Cedar-rin were here, why hadn’t they detected him?

More Cedar-rin ran through the plaza to attack the miners. Moon didn’t see Ghatli, and hoped for an instant that she had wisely decided to stay outside once she had shown the Cedar-rin the tunnel. Then a small figure dodged around a group of drones and ran toward an open pathway. Ghatli. Moon half-groaned, half-snarled.

He leapt to the roof of the next house to keep her in sight. She reached the pathway and ran down it, then dodged down an intersection to avoid a knot of fighting. Then she stopped, looking around in desperate confusion.

She had obviously been hoping that the prisoners would be held in some easily spotted place, and the size and darkness of the strange city was a shock. Moon, perched some distance above her on the roof of a house, was also desperate. He was going to have to shift to talk to her, to tell her she had to get out of here. That was going to be a tricky conversation.

Then one of the miners turned into the pathway from the plaza and moved in Ghatli’s direction. There was a house in the way, so it hadn’t seen her yet, but as soon as it reached the next junction, it would spot her. Ghatli faced the other way, peering uncertainly toward the light that shone from the base of the pyramid ahead, clutching her fishing prong. Moon rolled his eyes. Well, at least that was settled.

Moon leapt off the house and landed on the miner’s back, grabbed one of its legs and flipped himself under it. It flailed but he ripped his foot claws through its tender underside to spill its entrails. He shifted to groundling and shoved the dead body off him, and rolled to his feet in the junction just as Ghatli turned around. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, baffled. “You were behind us on the road!”

Moon hastily moved forward so she wouldn’t see the very recently dead miner. There was no non-suspicious answer for her question, no way to really explain his presence. He said, “Ghatli, you need to leave. Turn back the way you came, go back down the tunnel—”

“I have to get Ventl!” Ghatli was clearly just as determined as she was terrified.

“I’ll get him. That’s why I came,” Moon told her, trying to sound reassuring. He glanced behind him just as two miners and more Cedar-rin drones spilled into the pathway, fighting viciously.

“I can’t go back that way,” Ghatli said, jerking her fishing prong to emphasize the point. “Do you know where Ventl is?”

“This way.” Moon caught her hand and pulled her along, down the path toward the avenue. He was going to find a hiding spot for her among the houses, then look for Ventl.

But as they got closer to the avenue, Moon caught movement overhead. He looked up in time to see several miners pass through a shaft of light as they climbed down the upper web system. They were coming down here to attack the Cedar-rin. And the sound of fighting was drawing closer as the miners on the city floor fell back and the Cedarrin pursued them.

And Moon and Ghatli were now almost directly across from the temporarily unguarded entrance to the pyramid. There might not be another chance. Ghatli pointed. “There? Is that where they took Ventl?”

“I think so.” Moon made his decision. It was probably a bad decision, but that was nothing new. “Come on.”

Moon led the way across the avenue and through the piles of debris and discarded baskets, and up to the door of the pyramid. It was dark inside, lit only by the reflected glow of the light bundles behind them. A corridor with open doorways on each side led forward toward a large stairwell. The scent of fisher was a little stronger, carried on a faint breath of moving air. Moon stepped inside, an anxious Ghatli on his heels.

It was difficult to see, but as they went down the hall Moon could smell recently disturbed dry earth and traces of rot, mixed with more complex scents that he couldn’t recognize. The last doorway at the far end had been made larger by the miners knocking the side pillars out. Past it was a large dark space, barely lit by one or two distant light bundles, and Moon waited for his eyes to adjust.

“How did you get here ahead of us?” Ghatli was still breathing hard, but sounded less panicky and far more focused.

There was still no good answer for that. Moon began to make out details in the cavernous chamber past the doorway. It seemed to span the width of the whole pyramid. Sections of the paving had been torn up, but instead of disturbed earth, it revealed small shallow chambers buried beneath the floor, each about four paces long and two wide. “These have to be the graves, the Cedar-rin graves,” Moon said to Ghatli. But the ones he could see were empty. “The miners must have taken all the bodies.”

Moon stepped away from the doorway. This was getting stranger and stranger. He spotted faint light coming down the stairwell from the level above. That was where that draft and the hints of fur scent were coming from. The stairwell was Cedar-rin-sized and hadn’t been made wider by the miners. The scents and air drafts seemed to indicate that it was connected to the bigger grave chamber. “Let’s try this way.”

Keeping her voice carefully low, Ghatli said deliberately, “Moon, wait. Tell me. What are you?”

Moon turned to look at her in the meager light from the stairwell. It might have been better to seem bewildered at the question and say “what do you mean?” but somehow Moon just couldn’t do that. With no mental wall between his real self and his groundling self, there was nothing for him to fall back on. If he couldn’t pretend to himself that he was just another groundling, he couldn’t pretend it to her. Not while she was looking at him like this.

If Ghatli had been unsure, his blank response had just made her all that more certain, had confirmed every suspicion. She said, “The one the miners wanted, the person who killed their scouts. That was you.”

Moon couldn’t even try to deny it. “Yes.” His throat was so dry the word barely came out.

He saw Ghatli swallow back fear. “Moon, you don’t even have a knife. You are strong and fast, surely, but—What are you?”

“When the Cedar-rin asked that question, you told them it wasn’t their business.”

“I didn’t want them distracted. But now I’m asking it. What are you?”

Moon squeezed his eyes shut briefly. He should have known this was coming when he hadn’t been able to convince her to leave. Maybe he had known it was coming. He didn’t have much choice, if he still wanted to get Ventl free. And the heavy shadow in this corridor wasn’t going to help. He said, “Remember I’m not a Fell.”

She said, “What?” and then Moon shifted.

Ghatli clapped a hand over her mouth and made a strangled noise. He shifted back to his groundling form and she fell back a step, made more choking noises, then started to swear in her own language. “Mova getta, bazada, dis’tril de—” The only good sign was that she seemed more outraged than afraid. Possibly after the close calls with the miners, she had used up most of her fear already. She finally managed to say in Altanic, “You’re a Fell! You slept in my house!”

“I’m not a Fell.” Caught between that familiar bitter resentment and despair, Moon added, “And I also used your bathtub.”

“Stop that! Stop, implying that I … That’s not what I meant! I don’t turn people away because of how they look … You …” Furious and confused, Ghatli shook her head, her white hair flying, her ears twitching. She brought herself under control with effort, and lifted her hands helplessly. “You really look like a Fell, Moon.”

“No, I look like the descriptions of what Fell look like.” He took a deep breath. This wasn’t the first time he had had this conversation. Or tried to have it. He didn’t usually get this far. And even if occasionally one person believed him, the others in their settlement or tribe or group didn’t, and it wasn’t worth their life to defend him. In any other situation, he would give up and fly away, but this wasn’t any other situation. “If I was a Fell, you wouldn’t be able to say these things to me. Fell rulers can make people believe anything they want. If I was one, it would never occur to you to be suspicious. Anything I did, whatever I did, you’d find an excuse for it.”

Ghatli shook her head again. “But then what are you?”

A few other conversations had gotten this far, but this was where they usually fell apart. “I don’t know.”

Ghatli grimaced in disbelief. “How can you not know? Who doesn’t know what they are?”

“When you’re the only one.” Moon rubbed his forehead. He felt sick and exposed. “I had a mother, brothers and a sister, and they were all killed. Turns and turns ago. They were the only ones like me I ever saw. The first time I saw the Fell, it was in Saraseil. I’m not one of them.” He was very sure of that. Besides his own gut instinct, Moon had had time to examine Liheas’ body in detail, before and after killing him, and there were just too many differences.

Somewhere outside the pyramid, he heard movement, the distinctive scrabble of miners’ claws on stone. They had run out of time for this. “They’re coming back, Ghatli. I’m going to rescue Ventl, and then leave; do you want to come with me?”

Ghatli almost growled with frustration, but then said, “Right, yes. One more question. Why are you helping us?”

“Because you let me sleep in your house.” That wasn’t the reason. Moon didn’t know what the reason was. He was just tired of looking at dead groundlings.

He led the way up the steps and Ghatli hurriedly followed him. They reached the top where a wide corridor stretched away. It had floor to ceiling windows on each side, separated by large blocky pillars, that looked out on the cavernous chamber that seemed to form the rest of the pyramid’s interior. Moon could hear more movement below now, miners and the scrape of feet on stone. He moved to the nearest pillar and whispered, “Get over here, they’re coming.”

At least Ghatli didn’t hesitate to step into concealment behind him. Moon was still less scary than the miners, which he supposed was a good sign.

Below, light blazed across the big chamber. It was a miner carrying a small web-light bundle like a lantern. Then more miners moved into view, crossing the disturbed pavement. They were herding several injured Cedar-rin drones, and one tall primary, prodding them over and around the open graves in the floor. All the Cedar-rin were disarmed, their armor bloody. “Surely they didn’t kill all the others,” Ghatli whispered.

Moon doubted it. He was willing to bet many of the surviving Cedarrin had fallen back to the tunnel. They had a way in now, and they had a better idea of how many miners they were dealing with. Retreating and sending for reinforcements was the only sensible act. Of course, that didn’t mean the Cedar-rin would do it.

The miners took their prisoners further into the pyramid. Moon waited until the group was well past before he stepped away from the pillar and slipped quietly down the bridge to follow them. Ghatli crept along behind him.

The miners passed by a tall pile of debris and Moon didn’t realize it was made up of jumbled bones from the graves until the drones cried out. The primary said something, a short command, and all the drones quieted. Ghatli whispered, “Not many bones for all these open graves. Maybe they eat the dead, not the living.”

Moon wasn’t so sure. If they live off carrion, even the carrion of sentients … Except this wasn’t carrion, it was dried bones. That just didn’t seem like a practical food source for a whole species. There couldn’t be that many mass graves like this. At least he hoped not. “That can’t be it. It has to be something else.”

“At least the dead are dead, and don’t know anything about it,” Ghatli added. “It’s not so terrible that way.”

The miners headed toward a square structure at the far end of the chamber, and Moon stopped in the cover of the next pillar to watch. The structure was set back at an angle in the shadows, and as the miners drew closer with their light Moon saw it had open walls, and was just a set of pillars with a roof atop them. It could be a mortuary temple, set here in the middle of this room of graves …

There was movement inside it. And the light caught lines of webbing, forming bars. The miners had turned it into a cage for their prisoners. “We may have found Ventl,” he whispered, and Ghatli made a quiet noise of relief.

The miners reached the makeshift cage, and one did something to a section of webbing. It swung aside and the new prisoners were forced to enter.

The webbing was reattached and the miners retreated, moving rapidly across the disturbed ground now that they weren’t hampered by slower-moving bipeds. Moon said to Ghatli, “I’m going to go let them out.” Then they would have to make their way back to the tunnel where the Cedar-rin had come in. That was the part he was mostly worried about.

“I’ll come with you,” Ghatli said.

Moon turned to face her. “I’m not going to walk.”

“What?” She hurriedly stepped back as he shifted and extended his wings. “Oh.”

“I’m going to land on top of it, and start cutting the web.” He was hoping to avoid showing himself to the Cedar-rin. It would be easier if he and Ghatli could just grab Ventl and let the Cedar-rin make their way out on their own. “Once I let them out, I’ll come back and get you.”

Ghatli shook her head, determined. “I want to go with you. I can climb down from here and go across, while you’re—”

“If you come too, you have to fly over there with me.” Moon thought that would be a deal-breaker.

Instead, Ghatli lifted her chin. “Very well, let’s go.”

Moon swallowed back a hiss. He should probably just stop trying to figure out groundlings. He said, “All right, I’m going to pick you up.”

He leaned down and lifted her. Her little body was more solid than it looked. “You can hold onto that ridge of bone around my neck.” She gripped his collar flange. “Like that.”

“What do we tell them about you?” Ghatli said, a little breathless, probably from fear and shock at her own daring, “When they see you—”

“They’ll try to kill me. We’ll worry about it later.”

As he crouched to leap, Ghatli said, “I think you’re helping us because you have a deathwish.”

“I don’t know.” Maybe. He knew he didn’t have a lifewish.

Moon chose an angle where the prisoners wouldn’t be able to see him approach. Two flaps and a long jump took him across the chamber. He landed on the flat roof of the temple and set Ghatli on her feet. He didn’t hear any exclamations of surprise from the inhabitants and guessed the stone was so thick that his landing had been silent. This close the cage smelled like urine and feces and very dirty fisher. The web was anchored around a short pediment along the front. Ghatli went to the edge and leaned over to look inside, dangling her head down. “Ventl?”

Ventl’s voice said, “Ghatli!” Now there were startled exclamations.

“Quiet!” Ghatli turned to Moon. “Help me get down.”

“Just be careful,” he told her, and caught her arm to lower her over the pediment and down the front of the structure. He didn’t like letting her out of arm’s reach, but she needed to be able to get the prisoners organized for their escape.

Ghatli dropped the last pace or so and landed on the pavement in front of the cage. She peered through the web. “Disl! Meryl! We thought you were dead! Are all of you here?”

Moon bared his teeth in annoyance. With other fishers than just Ventl in the cage, his vague plan wouldn’t work. Once they were free, he was going to have to fly ahead and try to clear the way for them. He pried at the web, but it was harder and thicker than the type that made up the baskets. Moon pried at it, then sawed at it with his claws. It hurt; his claws had obviously not been designed for cutting through glass-like substances, more for clinging to branches.

“All but Denin and poor Benl,” Ventl told Ghatli. “The others have been trapped here for days, without much food or water. But at least the miners didn’t stick those brain-eating things in them.”

“Who is out there with you?” Eikenn’s voice demanded.

“It’s Moon.” Ghatli, wisely, gave no further details. “We’ll get you out.” She added, “Tell me, Eikenn of Cedar-rin. Why is this happening? What do the miners want with your dead?”

Eikenn didn’t answer, and Ghatli swore in frustration. “Tell me, or we won’t help you.”

Moon, to add verisimilitude, stopped cutting the web.

Maybe Eikenn really believed Ghatli would abandon the fishers, or maybe she just didn’t see a reason to conceal it anymore. “An told you our species can communicate to a certain extent at a distance, without sound or gesture.”

“Yes.”

“When we die, this does not stop.”

Ghatli was silent. It took Moon a moment to remember to keep cutting the web. The fishers had mentioned stories of ghosts associated with this area. Apparently they weren’t just stories. Eikenn continued, “There is no consciousness that can be spoken to by the living, but our dead continue to … not speak, but make sound. They sing to each other in their eternal sleep. After a time, when there are so many dead that the sound begins to drown out the living, we seal the city and leave it to them, and go to found another.”

“Oh.” Ghatli sounded blank. After a moment, she added, “So your dead are not quite … And the miners are … This seems very horrible. I understand your anger.”

Moon understood it too. This was far more horrific than it had seemed. He hoped the dead weren’t aware of what had happened to them. To lie there in your grave and listen to the digging … He twitched his spines, the skin under his scales creeping at the thought of it.

Eikenn’s armor creaked as she moved. “We do not know what benefit the miners derive from ingesting our dead. But I suspect they must communicate in a way similar to our silent exchanges. There must be some connection.”

Moon bet that was it. The miners must be able to hear the Cedar-rin dead too, and maybe they could hear the live Cedar-rin as well. That would explain how they had known the Cedar-rin had entered the cavern.

Ghatli said, “Ah. That does make more sense. I thought perhaps—” Moon practically heard her reconsider telling the Cedar-rin that she had thought the miners were using their dead as just a food source. “Never mind.”

Moon felt the web bar snap under his claws. The slight sound made one of the fishers curse in alarm, and the others shushed him. Moon leaned on the web and twisted, and the whole section quivered.

The echo of rock clinking warned him just in time. Moon sat up and squinted toward the far end of the chamber. Yes, there was light moving down there. He leaned over the pediment and whispered harshly, “Ghatli, they’re coming! Find somewhere to hide.”

Cursing softly, Ghatli scrambled to get away, the fishers inside urging her to hurry. Moon watched her fling herself into an open grave behind the temple and then flattened himself below the pediment. If the miners saw that the web was loose, hopefully they would think it was just a natural break. But if one came up here to fix it, he was in trouble.

After a short, nervous time, Moon heard the crunch of miners moving across the broken pavement. A fisher whispered, “They’re coming.”

Ventl, Eikenn, and a mixture of other voices hushed him.

The light grew brighter and the sounds louder and closer. Then a voice said, “We would speak.”

Moon tensed. It was Kall’s voice, or the voice of Kall’s reanimated body. Below him, Eikenn said, “You want to speak? You destroy our sacred dead, and mock us with the still-warm corpse of our brother. What do you have to speak of?”

“You have abandoned this place and the resources here. Why do you return?”

Moon had to see who was really doing the talking. He flattened his spines and pushed himself up just enough to see over the pediment.

Several miners stood at a short distance from the temple, one holding a light-bundle. But in front of them stood Kall, and something else. Moon supposed it must have been a miner too, but it was twice the size of the others. It had extra arms, or feelers, between each of its legs.

Kall said, “We have taken these resources for our own. I heard the power of this place echo through the rock, and I led the others here. It is ours now. You have no right to attack us.” The miniature miner buried in Kall’s back must be there as a translator, because it had to be the large miner standing by who was really speaking. Eikenn had been right, the miners did speak silently to each other, and couldn’t communicate with other species without this extreme method. It didn’t bode well. A species that couldn’t talk to anyone unlike themselves without killing someone first would not have learned how to negotiate.

And if the miner’s leader truly couldn’t see any reason why the Cedarrin might object to the miners breaking in here and digging up their ancestors to eat, then he didn’t know how Eikenn was going to explain it.

Eikenn clearly didn’t know either. She said, “This is our city, the resting place of our honored dead that you have desecrated, that you call resources. Now that we know how to fight you, the Rin will come here in as many numbers as it takes to destroy you utterly.”

Another miner moved forward, as if it meant to speak through Kall too. Then the leader lifted one of its big legs and slapped it. It staggered back and its rear legs collapsed under it. Moon blinked, startled. It was the first time he had seen the miners interact except to work or fight as a team. The other miners skittered away, their rapid movements conveying a nervous tension. He hadn’t seen that before either.

Kall said, “I need your dead to grow. They are dead, you have lost your claim on them.”

Right, Moon thought, impatient, arguing with these people is a waste of time. Now if the miners would just give up and leave so they could finish the escape.

Eikenn said, “Our dead sing to us, we can hear them! You have no right to silence them, to use them—”

“I ingest them, I grow in power.” There was a pause, and Kall added with stubborn persistence, “This place is no longer yours, I have taken it.”

Eikenn’s voice was eerily calm. “Then we must kill every one of you.”

The leader wasn’t saying “we” anymore, Moon noted. Maybe it was the only one eating the remains, getting the power. Some of the miners skittered forward again, and made darting motions at the leader. The one it had knocked down pushed itself up and just stood there, its fur trembling above what must be breathing orifices. It looked furious.

The leader rounded on the other miners and they retreated a little. The leader turned back and Kall said, “If you tell your people not to attack us, we will give you what you want.”

Eikenn made a noise that might possibly be a bitter laugh. “There is nothing you can give us except to leave here, leave our dead, and never return.”

The other miners quivered, skittered around, even more badly agitated. Moon wondered if they had ever fought anything capable of killing them before. He had thought the miners had sent Kall and Benl to the caravanserai as retaliation because they were angry at what he had done to their scouts. But maybe what they really were was afraid. And now they knew the Cedar-rin could kill them too, and would come down here after them to do it, and that there were many more on the way.

Obviously some of the miners didn’t like that so much, and if the only reason they were down here at all was so their leader could become more powerful …

Kall began to say, “We are not done here. If you come, we will kill—”

The angry miner leapt on the leader’s back. They rolled in a wild scramble, legs flailing, dust and debris flying. The others clustered around, darting in and out, so it was impossible to tell whose side they were on. The light-bundle fell, rolled a little distance away. Moon shoved himself upright and reached for the webbing again. They weren’t going to have a better chance.

As he wrenched at the section of web, Ghatli ran around to the front of the cell. She grabbed at it and pulled, urging the prisoners, “Come on, push!”

Moon wrenched at the loosened sections and felt it break somewhere lower down. It ripped free of the stone as the prisoners pushed at it. Moon leaned down and told Ghatli, “Lead them out. I’ll stop the miners if they come after you.”

She waved an acknowledgement and Moon stepped back from the edge as Ventl, several fishers, and a number of Cedar-rin spilled out of the cell. It was hard to tell in the dark but it looked like Eikenn was the only primary. He wondered if she had let herself be caught, either to try to communicate with the miners or to collect information she might be able to pass on to the other Cedar-rin through their mental connection. A few drones looked back at the temple, trying to see who had been on the roof, and Moon crouched behind the pediment.

He heard their hurried steps over the debris-strewn pavement. It would have been quicker to go out via the bridge, but while the Cedar-rin might have been able to climb up to it, the fishers and Ghatli probably couldn’t. He lifted up a little to check where they were, and saw in the illumination from the fallen light-bundle that Ghatli had swung wide to avoid the fighting miners. She jumped over the open graves and dodged around the piles of rock and broken pavement. The fishers followed her in a tight anxious group. Eikenn and the drones moved faster, but then Eikenn split off and ran toward the miners. No, not toward the miners. Toward Kall.

Moon jumped up and flapped hard, passing over the miners. He landed and crouched in the rubble. He could see Eikenn clearly from here as she ran into the lighted area around the struggling miners. Kall stood unmoving. She ran up behind him, scooped up a rock, and smashed it against the base of his neck.

All the miners froze, even the two who were locked in combat. Moon groaned to himself. He wished she hadn’t done that. He understood why she couldn’t leave Kall’s body as an animate toy for the miners, but he still wished she hadn’t.

Kall collapsed and Eikenn sprinted away. The leader shoved aside its miner opponent and lunged after her.

Moon craned his neck to try to see where Ghatli was, but the shadows were too thick. He could still hear running from that direction so they hadn’t reached the passage out of the pyramid yet. He waited until Eikenn passed by, then leapt at the leader.

He landed atop it and raked his claws through its furry back. It flipped sideways to throw him off and he jumped away to land between two open graves. He turned in time to see a blaze of light streak toward him and dove sideways. Eyes dazzled, he realized one of the miners had thrown the light-bundle at him. He rolled to his feet and leapt upward. He felt something brush his foot-claws and knew he had had a very close call.

The leap gave him just enough time to get a sense of where the miners were; his eyes were still dazzled but he heard their big bodies move over the broken paving. He landed and went into a crouch, just as the leader leapt atop him. Moon slashed upward as the mouth and hands reached for him but his claws barely grazed what should be the soft underbelly. The leader wasn’t only bigger, it was much tougher. A wiry hand grabbed for his face and he bit at it. As the creature tried to fold over on top of him, he shot out from under it.

The leader lunged at him and Moon leapt away, used his wings to propel himself a good fifty paces, then did it again. He spotted Eikenn running toward the big doorway at the far end of the chamber but the others had already vanished.

Moon reached the doorway just ahead of Eikenn. She stopped when she saw him, hefted the rock that she held. Moon guessed that his silhouette in the shadow and dim light was not reassuring, but he wasn’t going to shift. He said, “Just keep running.”

She threw a look back at the rapidly approaching miners and then darted through the doorway. Moon followed her through and out to the pyramid’s entrance. In the avenue beyond, the drones had stopped to wait for Eikenn. Ghatli and the fishers had stopped with them, waiting uncertainly. Eikenn ran down the steps to the drones and Moon leapt into the air again to cross over the avenue and land on a roof in the first row of houses. This provoked some alarmed noises and hasty shushing from the fishers. The drones appeared to be waiting for Eikenn’s verdict.

From here he had a better view, but the chamber seemed even darker than it had before. He caught movement among the shafts of light where the basket-moving web was, and saw miners climbing down the strands. But he couldn’t see any miners waiting among the paths between the houses. “It’s clear so far, but you’ve got to hurry,” he called down to Ghatli. “They’re not going to be far behind you.”

“This way, this way,” Ghatli whispered. “If the Cedar-rin won’t come, leave them.”

“Why are we following a monster?” one of the fishers whispered back.

“Shut up, Kenyl!” Ventl said.

They all plunged into the first pathway and hurried along it. After a moment of indecision, Eikenn followed with the drones.

Moon hopped two roofs over and caught a miner hiding between two houses. He dropped on it and ripped it apart before it had a chance to react.

The leader and his group of miners burst out of the pyramid into the avenue. The leader hesitated, its front legs waving in what might be uncertainty. More miners charged down the avenue and the leader started into the first pathway.

The groundlings aren’t going to make it, Moon thought. Not like this. Eikenn seemed to know it too. She sent half the drones ahead and stopped in a junction that was minimally defensible. Moon looked frantically for anything that might help. In a path that led away from the plaza where the battle had taken place he spotted some fallen sickles and long knives. He scooped them up, jumped up to a roof again, and hopped back to drop them in the path of the Cedar-rin. Then he turned to catch up with the fishers.

They had just reached the plaza and bolted through it, dodging around the bloody bodies of the drones who had died in the first attack. Ghatli pointed ahead, for the fishers’ benefit and for Moon’s. “The tunnel is there, between those two slopes!”

She pointed to where two pyramids formed a junction just beyond the last cluster of houses. From his better vantage point, Moon hissed in irritation. There were at least a dozen miners in the open space in front of the junction, more working their way toward it from an open passage along the far end of the houses. They were guarding against the Cedar-rin who had retreated into the tunnel. No, we’re not going to make it, Moon thought again. He hopped from one roof to the other, to get in front of the fishers. They stumbled to a startled halt as they saw him and he called down, “Ghatli, careful! It’s blocked by miners.”

Ventl peered up at him uncertainly, and Ghatli cursed again. She said, “What are we going to do?”

Moon looked around again and growled in despair. There was movement in the shadows and light shafts all over the cavern, the miners coming in from all sides. The Cedar-rin had fallen back to the plaza and fought the leader and its group of miners there. One miner stood to the side, just watching. From the gashes and wounds on its back, Moon guessed that was the one who had challenged the leader in the grave chamber. If he could just talk to it … But that was impossible, without someone’s dead possessed body as a translator. He told Ghatli, “Just … be ready to move, if there’s an opening.”

Ghatli’s expression clearly said she understood that meant there was little or no chance of escape. “All right.”

Moon pushed off from the roof and flew back to the plaza. He could only think of one thing to do.

The leader hung back a little to let the other miners engage the Cedar-rin. A few more of the drones had managed to take fallen weapons from their dead comrades and they fought in a tight circle, surrounded by the miners.

Moon leapt straight up and then dove for the leader, landed on its back, and wrenched at the join of one of its left legs. He yanked, twisted it with all his weight, and stabbed his claws into the joint. It lifted up on its other set of legs and slammed Moon down on the pavement. It jolted him loose but half the leg came with him, swinging sideways as he rolled away. The leader charged at him and Moon struggled to push himself up. Then Eikenn lunged in front of him, slashed her sickle at the leader’s wounded leg and sliced it the rest of the way off.

The leader jerked backward and staggered on its five remaining legs. Moon pushed himself upright and said to Eikenn, “I’ll go high, you go low?” He just hoped the drones could keep all the others occupied.

She jerked her head in agreement. “Try to get another leg on that side.”

The leader charged them again and Moon leapt for its back. He didn’t think killing the leader would change anything, or give them a chance to escape. But if he was going to die down here, he was going to take this thing with him.

He landed on the leader’s back and it spun to throw him off, but he dug his claws in and held on. Eikenn ducked in and got a good slash at the creature’s underside. Then it flipped and slammed Moon down on the pavement. As it spun upright again he got a dazed view of Eikenn sprawled on the ground.

Then something flashed over Moon’s head and another miner crashed into the leader.

Moon awkwardly scrambled away, his head ringing. Eikenn rolled to her feet and stumbled to stay upright. The miner was the same one who had challenged the leader inside the grave chamber, the one who had refused to take part in the battle. It had hit the leader between the two front legs and bowled it over, and now the two were locked underside to underside, as if they were having sex or trying to eat each other. Moon knew which one he thought more likely.

He threw a desperate look around. The other miners had stopped fighting and now skittered away from the drones to stand frozen in place. They watched the confrontation as if nothing else existed. He gasped to Eikenn, “Go, we need to go.”

She glanced around and said, “These creatures … make no sense,” and started toward the drones.

Moon felt you could say that about a lot of people. He managed to jump to the nearest rooftop, staggered but regained his balance, then leapt toward where he had left the fishers. Eikenn and the drones moved quickly into the pathways, carrying a few wounded. From up here Moon saw all the miners had frozen in place; they were everywhere among the pathways and houses now, where they had been converging on the plaza. The leader obviously didn’t control them completely, or the other miner wouldn’t have been able to attack it. But it clearly had some sort of connection to all the others, and they obeyed its orders. But it was as if the challenge by the other miner had suspended those orders until the matter was settled.

Moon found Ghatli and the fishers at the edge of the avenue, warily eyeing the miners who guarded the junction that led to the tunnel opening. More than a dozen stood in the open area between the two pyramids, unmoving, waiting. A light-bundle sat in the middle of the space, foiling any attempt at concealment in the shadows. But the miners just stood there.

Moon dropped off the roof next to Ghatli. All the fishers except Ventl scrambled back in alarm. Moon said, “I’m going to walk toward the tunnel. If they don’t kill me, follow.”

Ventl said, “Is that a good idea?”

Ghatli’s ears twitched with nerves but she was still determined. “Our choice is to stay here and be killed, so … let’s just get it over with.”

That was how Moon usually felt, too. He started forward, every nerve jumping, his partially extended foot claws clicking on the stone. Behind him, the fishers anxiously whispered to each other.

Once out in the open area of the junction he could see the passage between the two pyramids was only a hundred or so paces long. It stretched back to a shadowy fold of the cavern wall, and Moon thought he could spot the tunnel opening at its base, but only because several miners were grouped near it. He understood how it might have gone unnoticed by the invading miners. It might have been a passage left open for the Cedar-rin who had buried their city to leave it for the last time.

He stepped cautiously close to the first miner, and looked for its eyes. The small dark orbs were glazed over with a white film. It was like the miners were in some sort of catatonic state. Listening, Moon thought. Or watching the dominance battle through the miners who were close enough to see it? He lifted a hand and motioned for Ghatli to follow.

Ghatli and the fishers sprinted into the open and Moon waited until they rushed past him before he followed. He stopped at the mouth of the passage, trying to watch all the miners at once. Presumably there were still Cedar-rin waiting in the tunnel. He hoped they didn’t stop the fishers. Ghatli was going to have to handle that part; Moon’s appearance there would just start another fight.

Ghatli and the others ran down the length of the passage. The fishers hurried to disappear into the shadow that marked the tunnel entrance, but Ghatli stopped. “Moon!” She whispered, and motioned frantically for him to follow.

“Go on,” he told her, “I’m right behind you.” Eikenn and the drones emerged from the path between the houses and started across the avenue. Moon meant to follow them through the tunnel. Hopefully the Cedar-rin inside intended to withdraw, and he would be able to get out without any violent confrontations.

The drones were too disciplined, and too occupied by helping the wounded, to do more than glance warily at Moon as they passed by. Eikenn followed, limping a little. Moon moved after her, backing away from the stationary miners.

The drones reached the tunnel and started in. Eikenn stopped to face the miners, waiting until the drones all filed inside. Moon waited too.

The last few drones slipped into the tunnel. Then the nearest miner twitched into motion. Moon hissed and flinched back, as Eikenn braced herself and lifted her sickle.

But the miner moved away toward the junction and the avenue beyond. The others moved too, and all headed in the same direction.

“Something changed,” Moon said under his breath. He thought the fight must have come to a conclusion.

The pearly scales on Eikenn’s brow furrowed in frustration. She said, “I have to see what’s happened,” and started after the miners.

Moon said, “Wait.” She stopped and he leapt up the side of the pyramid and landed on the pitted stone slope. He hooked his claws into the gaps and cracks and climbed rapidly up to where he had a view of the cavern.

The larger shape of the leader was easy to spot. It lay on its back, five remaining legs in the air. Its opponent stood nearby. It looked unsteady and there were gaping tears in the fur across its back. The other miners moved toward it, all of them, from all over the cavern. As the nearest gathered around, Moon thought they might attack it. Instead, it moved away, taking a path between the houses, and the miners in the plaza followed. The others Moon could see changed their direction toward a point at the far end of the cavern.

Moon jumped, used his wings to slow his fall, and landed in a crouch. “The big one—the one you talked to—is dead. The others are following the one who killed it, all going toward the other end of the cavern.”

Eikenn’s expression hardened. “They are going to destroy more of our dead. We will have to return here with more drones.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Moon looked toward the entrance of the passage. The last miner had vanished, leaving the light-bundle behind. Looking at this place now, he couldn’t see it as a ruined city, just a giant tomb. “It didn’t look like the others wanted to go to war with you. That was why that one attacked the—”

He sensed movement through the air just behind him. He flared his spines and twisted away, and the sickle that had been aimed at his head bit into his shoulder and glanced off his collar flange. Eikenn slashed at him again and Moon hooked the sickle in his claws and tore it out of her hand. He flung it away and she fell back a step.

Moon leapt away from her, up onto the slope of the pyramid. He snarled, “I helped you.” He was surprised, and bitterly angry at himself for it. This is how it always happened, this was what he got for helping groundlings. He didn’t know how he could let himself forget for one instant. As if that one encounter with the Fell had made him forget who he was.

If that was true, then this was a pointed reminder.

Eikenn backed away, watching him. “And why would a creature like you help us?”

“Because—” He stopped himself. Because Ghatli asked me to, he had been about to say. But she hadn’t. Moon had inserted himself into this whole situation.

Eikenn said, “You are a Fell, one of their vanguard.”

“Idiot. The rulers aren’t the vanguard of the Fell, the major kethel are,” Moon said. There was no point in protesting. And if she thought he was a Fell ruler, she wouldn’t blame Ghatli or the fishers for his presence.

Eikenn backed away toward the tunnel. Moon turned and climbed further up the pyramid, until he had enough height to push off. He half-

spread his wings and managed to leap to the next pyramid, then the next, until he was below the basket-web structure. It was abandoned now, the miners gone to the cavern floor for the ceremony or meeting or whatever it was they were doing.

Moon clung to the sloping wall just below it and took a deep breath to steady himself. Moisture trickled over his scales, but he could tell the cut wasn’t deep. It just hurt. For more than the obvious reason.

He braced himself and leapt up to the web, and climbed back out of the crevasse.

Before Moon went to look for a resting spot, he flew over the hills until he saw Ghatli, the fishers, and the Cedar-rin leaving the tunnel and making their way down the trade route. The miners had all retreated into the crevasse and there was no sign of any attempt to pursue the Cedar-rin.

Weary and in pain, Moon went to ground on the roof of the caravanserai. He lay across the trapdoor, so the vibrations of anyone approaching it would wake him. There was no vantage point that overlooked it, and it was relatively safe from predators. He drowsed in his other form first, listening to movement in the house below, the quiet voices of the fishers and an occasional Cedar-rin. When he felt the cut stop bleeding, he shifted to his groundling form to sleep more deeply.

He woke when the sky was awash with a gold sunset. He flexed his shoulder cautiously, but the cut had continued to knit and was now scabbed over. There was more movement in the house below, but nothing that seemed urgent. He could smell cooking, fish and maybe some sort of sweet tuber.

He shifted to his winged form and eased up along the edge of the roof. In the clearing below, several drones and three Cedar-rin primaries sat. One of the primaries was Eikenn. They had some packs with them and there was some evidence that they had made a meal off of provisions they had brought with them. They weren’t impeding access to the caravanserai; as Moon watched, a group of a few fishers and other groundlings crossed the clearing and went inside, and two other fishers left, heading down the path for the shore. All the other groundlings circled widely around the Cedar-rin and watched them without favor, but they didn’t seem afraid.

Moon squinted toward the lake and saw the Cedar-rin boats were now moored in the shallows near the fishers’ stilt village. The fishers there were ignoring them, busying themselves with rolling up their nets for the night.

Moon sat for a time, watching the lights made from the glow plants gradually come to life in the clearing.

He wanted to stay here.

It was an idiotic impulse. Even if Ghatli had been the only one to see him, she didn’t know him well enough to trust him. It wasn’t a survival-conducive act for a groundling, or a skyling or a waterling for that matter, to let something like him into their home, among their unsuspecting friends. He didn’t even know what he was. He wasn’t a Fell, but he had killed a Fell ruler; maybe he was something worse.

Below, he saw Ghatli walk out of the caravanserai with Ventl, heading toward Eikenn.

Moon turned to the back of the roof and climbed down the tree that supported the structure. He slipped down along the side of the bathing room where it was half-buried in the roots and the hillside, and stopped when he could hear voices.

Eikenn was saying, “Our scouts report the miners are leaving our city.”

Ghatli said, dryly, “We are overjoyed.”

Eikenn didn’t react. “They are moving away through the hills, presumably returning to where they came from. We will, naturally, remain here until we can confirm that they have left none of their number behind. And we will seal the city again.”

“Good.” That was Ventl.

Then Ghatli said, “Where is he?”

Eikenn didn’t answer.

Ghatli continued, “I know you did something to him. I think he’s dead in there, and when you seal the city, you will cover up evidence of your crime.”

Eikenn said, “That is not true.”

Ghatli’s voice was almost as calm as Eikenn’s. Except Moon could hear the anger under Ghatli’s cool tone. “Then tell me what you did.”

The silence stretched. Then Eikenn said, “I drove it away. It flew out through the opening to the surface.”

Ghatli was apparently unsatisfied with that. “I call you a liar.”

“Then I will speak to you no longer.” Moon listened to Eikenn’s quiet footsteps move away across the grass, then to Ghatli and Ventl entering the caravanserai, much less quietly.

Moon stayed where he was, concealed in the brush. He dozed off and on through the night, listening until the groundlings in the caravanserai gradually quieted. At some point before dawn, the Cedar-rin withdrew down toward the shore. He didn’t think they were leaving, but he wondered if they were meeting reinforcements who had been sent to help make sure the city was secure.

He knew Ghatli got up before dawn, so it wasn’t a surprise when he heard movement in the lower rooms of the structure. Then a few moments later someone came down the ladderwell into the bathing room. Moon climbed out of the brush and slipped around to the back of the building, and went in through the door used for cleaning the latrines.

Moon peeked through the passage into the bathing room to make sure it really was Ghatli in there. It was, and she was priming the pump for the bath. He stepped into the doorway, shifted to his groundling form, and whispered, “Ghatli.”

“Gah!” She spun around. “Moon!”

“I just came to tell you I’m leaving,” he said hurriedly, wanting her to know he didn’t mean to make this any more difficult for either of them. “And that Eikenn stabbed me in the back. So … Keep that in mind, when you’re dealing with her.”

“Ah.” Ghatli wrinkled her lips in distaste. “That doesn’t surprise me.” She watched him, her expression hard to read. “I’m glad you survived.”

Moon shrugged. He was too, mostly. He supposed. He turned toward the door. “Keep Ventl out of trouble.”

“Moon, wait. I thank you for everything you did for us. You saved our lives.” Ghatli hesitated. “If I could ask you to stay—”

“I wouldn’t stay.” He shook his head immediately, relieving her of that burden. “I’m not looking for a place to stay.” He had already gone over all the reasons remaining here was impossible. He would find another groundling town or settlement at some point, but it would be a place where no one knew what he was.

Ghatli didn’t sound very relieved. “What are you looking for? Your people?”

He wasn’t looking for anything in particular anymore. If there were any people like him, they had been left behind in the far east somewhere, long ago, and he wasn’t sure they were anyone he wanted to know. But that wasn’t what Ghatli wanted to hear. “Yes, that’s what I’m looking for.”

So with the last words he said to Ghatli a lie, Moon slipped out the door, and into the jungle.