“I won’t be going back,” Moon said. He wasn’t happy to see Niran go, either. In the times when life with the court became overwhelmingly strange, it had been good to have a groundling to talk to. But he knew how much Niran missed his family and the Golden Isles. “But thank him for me.”
Everyone said their last goodbyes, or in Stone’s case, cuffed Moon in the head and said, “Don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone.”
Moon and Jade retreated to the knothole to watch the boats leave. The Arbora on the platform untied the ropes and both craft lifted easily into the air. Their sails didn’t expand; the ships were powered by tiny pieces of rock from the heart of a flying island that allowed them to travel on the lines of force that crossed the Three Worlds. The sails were only for extra speed on windy days. The
Valendera
floated gracefully off the platform, then turned to find the path through the green caverns of the mountain-tree forest. The
Indala
followed, its hull scraping a spiral tree on the edge of the platform and its turn just a little jerky. Moon hoped Blossom didn’t run into anything on the way out of the Reaches. The path upward through the tree canopies wasn’t that far away, and he thought she would do better once she was up in the open air.
That was Moon’s last tie to his past, to the groundling world, severed. It should have felt like a relief. Moon wasn’t sure what he felt. Which was nothing new, so maybe he shouldn’t worry about it.
Jade took Moon’s wrist. She looked thoughtful. “Do you wish you were going?”
Startled and guilty, Moon felt himself flush. “No,” he said. “Why would you think that?”
She shook her head, and watched the boats slowly vanish into the dim light and mist of the forest. “You’ve always traveled so much. Is it hard to stay in one place?”
“No, it’s not hard. It’s just…different.” Moon didn’t think staying in one place would be the problem.
* * *
Three Changes of the Month Later
Moon had, at several points since they arrived at the new colony, asked various people exactly what consorts were supposed to do, besides be mated to a queen to produce royal clutches and infertile warriors for the court. The fact that no one seemed to have a straight answer wasn’t encouraging.
When he asked Chime, they were out watching over the Arbora hunters, who were stalking game on the platforms of the suspended forest. The court was still unsure of all the dangers in this new place, and it was much safer to have a group of warriors keep watch when the hunters were focused on their prey, while the soldiers stayed behind to guard the platforms and entrances of the colony tree. Since Aeriat, especially royal Aeriat, didn’t normally hunt, Moon was technically supposed to be just along for the exercise, even though he had more experience with hunting and being stalked than all the warriors put together.
Moon had been able to help a little with the warriors’ other new duties, like exploring Indigo Cloud’s new territory and helping the hunters make detailed maps of the platforms and the connecting bridges between them. They were also noting predators and all the different types of grasseaters and where they ranged, which were abundant and made good staple prey, and which were scarce and better left alone to increase over long periods.
Answering his question, Chime said, “Consorts are supposed to listen to the Arbora, any concerns they have, or things they aren’t happy about, and try to gently point it out to the queens.”
Perched near them, Balm said, wryly, “It helps if they listen to the warriors, too.”
“Of course,” Chime said, as if that was self-evident. Then ruined it by adding, “But warriors’ concerns are too frivolous to worry about.”
Balm eyed him. “So who cares what warriors think?” Balm was Jade’s clutchmate, one of the female warriors sometimes born to queen’s clutches. Having been a warrior all her life, her perspective was somewhat different than Chime’s.
Moon rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the platform, feeling the conversation had gone off on a tangent that would make it difficult if not impossible to return to the original subject. The afternoon was warm and the air so damp it might as well be raining, the light dim through cloud cover somewhere high above the leafy canopy. From the branch they had a view across to the platform about two hundred paces below, where the Arbora hunted.
It was a huge surface, spiraling halfway around the enormous bulk of a mountain-tree, heavily forested with a stream of runoff falling down onto the smaller platforms nestled in the branches below it. Moon could catch occasional flashes of color from the Arbora’s scales as they climbed and leapt among the thick greenery. Arbora might be smaller than Aeriat and lack wings, but in their shifted forms they were scaled and powerfully muscled, and their teeth and claws were just as sharp. Unfortunately, the suspended forest was just as rife with predators as it was with grasseaters.
Moon wasn’t as worried about the forested hunting ground as he was the platform directly below it. It was overshadowed and overgrown with bulbous white vines with dark purple leaves, concealed by drifts of mist. What little he could see looked dangerous and Moon thought all it needed were piles of bones along its rotting edges.
Balm was saying, “If you don’t listen to the warriors it just causes more problems with the young males—”
Chime snorted in a derisive way that was an invitation for Balm to hit him. “Warriors complain a lot. Much more than Arbora. If you listen to them you wouldn’t have time for—”
“All you people complain more than anybody else I’ve ever met,” Moon said, “with less reason.” He had tried to keep his opinions on running the court to himself, because there was nothing he knew less about than managing a Raksuran colony. And he thought Jade did a good job of keeping an eye on the Arbora and the warriors. He had no intention of butting in and causing trouble by repeating “concerns” unless he knew a lot more about the situation.
Chime stiffened in offense, but Balm laughed. “It’s probably true.”
Moon nudged his shoulder against Chime’s. “It was a joke.”
“It was not.” But Chime settled his ruffled spines anyway. “Oh, speaking of complaining, there was something I wanted to let you know. I heard some of the others talking: they’re worried that Stone won’t come back.”
Moon frowned, startled. “Why wouldn’t he come back?”
Balm said, “He’s been gone a lot over the last twenty turns or so. He was gone more than he was at the old colony.” She shrugged her folded wings, her expression thoughtful. “I don’t know, but I think that was one of the reasons things got so bad. For example, if he was there, I don’t think Pearl would have sent Dust and Burn off to other courts.”
Moon didn’t comment. Dust and Burn were the young consorts who had belonged to Amber, the sister queen who had died before Moon had come to the court. If they had still been there, Jade would have been able to take one of them and there would have been no need for Stone to go on the trip to Star Aster to ask for a consort, which had led him to find Moon.
“So, since we’re settled here now, there’s been some talk that he might leave again,” Chime finished. He turned to Moon, his brow scrunched in worry. “What do you think?”
Moon rippled his spines, hoping he was conveying unconcern. One of the things he had finally figured out over the past few months was that while he could read Raksuran body language fine, his own didn’t quite match theirs and didn’t always mean what he thought it did. Realizing this had explained at least some of his problems fitting into the court. “Stone didn’t sound like he wasn’t coming back.” And Moon had had the strong impression that Stone was ready to settle down. “He’s wanted to come to the Reaches for a long time; I don’t think he was planning to leave any time soon.”
“That’s good.” Chime settled his spines, then said, reluctantly, “Of course, River said—”
Balm hissed in disapproval. “Chime, no one cares what River said.”
Moon could guess what this was about. “I’d rather not be blind-sided.” River was Pearl’s favorite warrior, and the leader of her faction. Like Balm, he was a warrior from a royal clutch; in River’s case, it had given him an attitude. It had been made worse by the fact that Pearl, for some unfathomable reason, had decided to sleep with him.
After the trip back from the freshwater sea, Moon had been hoping River would be reconciled to his existence. He hadn’t been. If anything, their relationship was worse, since Moon had realized that River wasn’t just making trouble, he really did honestly think Moon was a terrible consort and bad for the court.
Balm’s face was grim. Chime flicked his spines at her and said, “It’s ridiculous, but River said Stone was going to use the trip to the Golden Isles as a way to look for another consort.” Looking at Moon, Chime’s expression turned guilty. “It’s not true, of course. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“That’s why I told you not to,” Balm said.
Chime hissed at her. Moon said, “It’s all right. I would have heard it sooner or later.”
Chime still looked uneasy. “I just—”
A distant shriek made Moon’s spines flare. He went still and scanned the platform.
“That was an Arbora,” Chime whispered, shocked. “Someone’s hurt.”
Balm shushed him. Then she said, “There! See it?” an instant before Moon spotted the thrashing in the undergrowth, near the center of the wooded platform. He sprang off the branch, snapped his wings out and dropped toward it, hard flaps speeding his way.
Balm and Chime were right behind him. Several other warriors dropped off various branches and vantage points to converge on the spot.
Moon dove on the platform and saw the flicker of scales through the trees and undergrowth as Arbora ran toward the disturbance. From the way the trees swayed and thrashed, whatever they were fighting in there was huge.
Then Balm called to him, “Moon, stay back! Let us handle it!”
Moon swallowed a growl but broke off, letting the others go in first. But he swept around in a tight circle, cupped his wings to slow down, and dropped into the branches of a spiral tree. He climbed down until he had a view of the fight.
He saw a hole in the platform floor, surrounded by clumps of dirt and grass and torn roots. Something was inside it, visible only as white tentacles a good twenty paces long. They had clawed tips, striking and slashing at the warriors and Arbora who dodged and struck back. The creature had one struggling Arbora in its grip, and two others lay sprawled on the ground nearby.
As the warriors attacked, two Arbora closed in, armed with the short spears they used to augment their own claws for hunting. They stabbed at the tentacle that held the captive hunter. The warriors swooped in from above to strike at it. Balm ripped one tentacle open with her foot-claws. Chime tried a similar strike, missed, and almost had an aerial collision with Sage, but it still helped distract the creature.
The warriors tore at it and the creature seemed to realize it was badly outnumbered. It tossed the hunter away and pulled its tentacles back into its lair.
That’s a relief,
Moon thought. The thing looked as if it would be nearly impossible to fight in that defensive position. Now they just needed to retrieve the wounded and get out of here.
The Arbora grabbed the unconscious hunters and retreated as the creature sunk rapidly down into its hole. Then one tentacle snapped out, snatched a warrior out of the air, and yanked him down just as the creature disappeared underground. Moon gasped in dismay.
With a chorus of shocked cries and angry growls, everyone charged the opening.
That’s not going to work,
Moon thought. They couldn’t possibly retrieve the warrior without losing half the others.
Unless…
These platforms weren’t thick enough for an underground nest for something that large, and they were mostly roots.
If that’s not a lair, it’s a tunnel
.
He scrambled back up the tree, sprang into the air, and headed for the edge of the platform. Someone shouted behind him but he couldn’t stop to explain. If he was right, he would only have a few moments to catch the creature.
He reached the edge and dove down, past the exposed roots jutting out from the side, and swung in to land on the platform fifty paces below. The white vines stretched up over his head, filling the damp air with a scent like sweet rot; the purple leaves cut off what little light there was. He scanned the underside of the platform above and spotted the torn roots and moss bundles hanging down where the creature had tunneled up through the forest platform to attack the Arbora.
Ha, I was right.
And he could hear something thrashing in the vines in that direction.
Moon tore through the thick vegetation, relying on speed and surprise to protect him from whatever else lived here, and headed toward the sound.
It cut off abruptly and Moon knew the creature had heard him. He crouched and sprang up, two flaps taking him high enough to catch hold of the mass of twisted roots that formed the underside of the upper platform. The creature might be able to spot him, but the vantage point gave him a view of the vine surface.
Dirt clumps fell down the tunnel opening, and warriors and Arbora yelled at each other somewhere above. But below it, and as far as he could see, the vines were completely motionless. Moon hissed in frustration. The creature had to be here somewhere; it hadn’t had time to dig down through to another platform.
He sensed movement near him and looked up with a snarl. A tree frog nearly twice his size huddled in the roots barely ten paces away, staring at him with wide frightened eyes.
Moon had never tried to talk to a tree frog before, but it was worth a try. In Raksuran, he said, “Where is it?”
It might not have understood the language, but it had seen enough of the situation to get the idea. It pointed to a spot about thirty paces south of the tunnel opening.
Moon didn’t hesitate, swinging across the root mass until he was above the spot. He caught a flash of slick white skin, too iridescent to be one of the vines, and dropped for it.