“There are carvings on these walls,” Jade pointed out, as she landed on another ledge.
Moon had noticed that too. They were too old and worn down to make much out of, but he could see straight lines and ovals and sharp angles that didn’t look at all like the curling floral designs on the rusted metal. “I think these used to be stone stairs, or something, that collapsed. The groundlings must have built all these metal ones to replace them.”
Lithe used a chain to help her swing across a gap that was a little too wide. “But how did these groundlings find this place?” she wondered. “If Floret hadn’t seen the Fell go to the island, if Shade hadn’t left a trail, we might never have found it.”
Chime said, “Maybe there was a city on the surface once, and the jungle grew over it.”
Moon felt a chill that had nothing to do with the deep still water. He paused and looked around again at the abandoned metal devices, the rusted tools scattered on the pathway. He realized the disintegrating leather oval that lay near his claws was a groundling shoe, cast aside in headlong flight. He said, “Or the groundlings were called here, like the Fell. And they ran away. Whatever they found, they ran away from it.”
They all went still for a moment, absorbing that idea. Even Malachite paused and tilted her head to consider it.
Jade hissed low under her breath. “After all the trouble they took to build these stairs… It must have been something terrible.”
“It can’t have killed them all,” Lithe said, her spines flicking uneasily. “We’d find more remains.”
Malachite leapt down to the next ledge. But she said, “Tell us exactly what you saw and heard from the Fell.”
As they climbed, Moon told them everything he remembered, trying to repeat it as close to verbatim as possible. When he was done he gave Chime a prod, and Chime nervously described what he had heard of the strange voice.
They were getting closer to the bottom of the cavern. The water didn’t smell stagnant, and there was enough movement in it to show that it was connected to the open sea somewhere. But the faded carving and the remnants of the original stone stairs went all the way down past the dark surface, the water lapping against them.
Maybe the sea was shallower when they were built,
Moon thought.
The last rusted metal stair curved into a deep alcove cut into the wall, ending on a smooth stone platform with steps that led down to vanish under the water. The Fell-stench was pronounced here, as if the Fell had spent some time on this platform.
Hanging from the curved roof of the alcove, suspended from more of the heavy chains, were several bell-shaped metal huts. The rock-lights Lithe and Chime carried reflected off the rusted metal, throwing huge shadows onto the cavern walls. Moon looked around, baffled. The trail clearly ended here.
He turned back to the huts. They looked a little like cargo lifters but were too small to take much of a load at one time. And the round sealed doors were too narrow for boxes and bales, but just right for an average-sized groundling to step through. He had a bad feeling about this.
Jade crouched to examine the edge of the platform, searching for traces that someone had passed this way. “So the Fell swam from here?” she asked, keeping her voice low. Chime and Lithe searched the dark corners of the platform, and Malachite stood still, listening for telltale splashes.
Moon saw the huts were suspended from a heavy metal beam that had been mounted to the old stone walls, and that it held chains and wheels and gears and other strange machinery, so verdigrised it was hard to tell one piece from the other. There were also dark green vines, twining around the chains, and growing down and through the roofs of each little hut. They all came from an odd plant covering the ceiling of the alcove. It looked like a fungus flower, covered with tiny white petals, spread to catch sustenance out of the damp air.
This is new,
Moon thought, baffled. It looked like the groundlings who had built the huts and the stairs had deliberately placed the vines this way.
Several sets of chains and vines led from the beam straight down into the water, as if those huts had dropped or been lowered below the surface. Some of them looked like they had been that way for turns, the chains encrusted with salt, the vines white and withered. But three sets of chains had had the rust scraped off in patches, as if they had recently been cranked along the beam, and the vines… Moon leaned out over the water to touch one. It was vibrating and making faint hissing noises.
Oh, you have to be joking…
Moon stepped around and caught hold of a metal handle on the nearest hut. Jade came to help him, and Chime and Lithe stopped their futile search to watch.
With Jade holding the hut by one of the protrusions on its ribbed metal surface, Moon twisted the wheel-shaped handle and pulled. The door came open with a puff of displaced air and revealed a molded, rusted interior. Moon tasted that air, and then coughed. It smelled of mold and rust and salt but it wasn’t stale. A small window in the opposite wall was set with a heavy piece of faceted crystal, spotted with white stains.
Lithe came over to peer through the door. She said, “There are handholds inside.” She looked up at Moon, startled, as she came to the inevitable conclusion. “Groundlings ride in this?”
It seemed incredible, but that was how everything added up. Moon nodded toward the three sets of recently used chains and vines that led below the surface. “I think the Fell took those down into the water.”
Jade’s expression was dubious, but she said, “Wait here, I’ll take a look.” She crouched down and slipped below the surface.
Moon dropped to the edge of the platform and stuck his head in the water. It was too murky to see anything but the flick of Jade’s tail as she used one of the chains to pull herself down. He sat up and shook the water out of his head frills.
They waited tensely for what felt like a long time, but then Jade surfaced with a splash. She pulled herself up onto the platform, breathing hard. “I went down until I ran out of air, but I couldn’t see the huts. I did see light, though, as if there’s an opening to the outside somewhere down there.”
Moon twitched aside as Malachite stepped up beside him. Her growl was so low Moon couldn’t hear it; he just felt it in the bones behind his ear. She said, “I’ll have to do as the Fell did, and take one of those… things down.”
Getting inside that small metal cage was the last thing Moon wanted to do, but there was no way around it. He said, “If the Fell can figure out how to use these things, we can.”
Malachite moved aside, and gestured with a claw at Lithe. Lithe leaned into the doorway of the open hut, then cautiously stepped inside. The hut swayed a little under her feet. Jade jerked her head at Chime, and he followed Lithe in. Her voice ringing off the hollow metal, Lithe said, “There’s just a lever.” Moon craned his neck to see her cautiously probing a slot in the rusted metal wall. The lever rested at the top of it.
Pointing up at the curved ceiling, Chime added, “That vine. Air is flowing down it. It smells like outside air.” He stepped out again to look at the plant. “It must take the air in through the petals, and push what it doesn’t need out through the vines. Sort of the way mountain-trees do with water.”
Malachite motioned for Lithe to get out of the hut. “All of you wait here.”
Jade exchanged a look with Moon. She didn’t need to speak her reservations aloud. Obviously groundlings had operated these contraptions safely but that had been a long time ago, and there was no telling if they still worked as intended.
Lithe stepped back against the wall of the hut. She said, “I’ll go with you. You might need me.”
Malachite’s spines rose in clear “obey me now” mode. Lithe persisted, “The Fell thought they needed a crossbreed to get inside this place, whatever it is. If they’re right, maybe I can get in too. You don’t want to come all this way and be stuck somewhere, unable to get to Shade.”
Malachite’s ironic head tilt suggested that Lithe’s attempt at emotional manipulation had failed. But she admitted, “Very well, little one. You’ll come with me.”
Her voice cool, Jade said, “I’ll follow in another hut. It’s safer, if something goes wrong.”
Malachite’s tail twitched with annoyance, but she was obviously impatient and arguing the point would be speaking directly to Jade. She ducked and stepped into the hut. Chime blurted, “Make sure the door seals tight.”
Lithe gave him a grim nod, and pulled the door closed. The handle spun as she tightened it from the inside. Jade murmured, “This may be a short trip if these things don’t work like we think they do…”
Then the chains jerked and the metal beam above them groaned and made a whooshing noise. The hut sank slowly into the water. Moon said, “It works.” He hoped it worked. The Fell and Shade might be dead somewhere below, trapped in the missing huts.
We’re going to feel really stupid if that happens.
Jade turned to the next hut, caught the handle, and pulled it to the platform. Moon held it steady as she got the door open. It looked the same as the other, if a little more moldy.
Jade stepped inside and said, “You two wait here—”
Moon stepped in after her, holding his hand under the vine growing through the roof to make sure the air was flowing. “I can come with you, or follow in another one.”
Chime groaned in dismay and stepped in after him. “Me, too. Let’s all go together. Then when—if we die, it’ll be less… lonely.”
Jade snarled. “Fine.”
They pulled the door shut and closed it tightly. Then Jade took a deep breath and pushed the lever down.
There was a jolt as the hut hit the water and sank into it. A chill crossed Moon’s scales, sinking down into the skin beneath as the water rose outside the thin metal walls. It covered the crystal window with murky darkness. The only light was the glow from the stone Lithe had made; it flickered, since Chime held it and was shivering hard enough to make his spines rattle. Jade said under her breath, “If we survive this…”
“You didn’t have to come,” Moon said. It came out harshly, mostly because his throat was tight with dread that the huts would burst too far underwater for them to find the way to the surface. To clarify, he added, “I’m glad you did.”
Jade met his gaze. “I told you I would bring you back to Indigo Cloud, whatever it took.”
Moon felt his spines twitch involuntarily. It warmed his heart, and other parts of him, to hear her say it. He shouldn’t need to hear it after everything she had done for him, but apparently he did.
She added, “And if Malachite had really wanted to stop me, she’d just break my wing, so I’m taking that as an encouraging sign. If we get out of this alive, you might put in a word for me.”
Moon nodded. “I’ll try.”
Chime moaned. “This is the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
“I don’t know about that.” Wary of moving too much on the unsteady floor, Moon eased toward the crystal window. He thought he had seen a flicker of light and wondered if it was from Malachite and Lithe’s hut. “The parasites inside the leviathan…”
“That’s true,” Chime admitted, still shivering. “But—”
Moon lost the rest because of what he was seeing outside the window. Jade leaned over to look and gasped in amazement.
They had passed out of the dark water of the cavern and into sunlit blue-green depths. They must be traveling down the outside of the island, with the rocky cliffs that concealed the cavern above them. But light shone from the rock itself.
It was studded with round or oblong windows set into the shapes of pointed arches, or curved towers topped with domes. It was a city, carved into the rock roots of the island. A living city. Moon hissed in awe.
“A sea kingdom,” Jade whispered. Then more uncertainly, “Is it?”
“I don’t see any sealings.” Moon couldn’t take his eyes off the city. Chime pressed against his side and Moon moved back a little so he could get a better view. “I always thought sea kingdom cities would be more… open, more spread out. This looks like it’s all enclosed.” As if it was designed for people who couldn’t breathe water.
“Why would groundlings build this?” Jade said, then answered her own question. “Unless they wanted a city completely safe from the Fell.”
Lost in wonder, Chime murmured, “It has been, until now.”
Or something worse than the Fell,
Moon thought.
The hut drew closer to the city, or the rock base of the island sloped outwards toward them. They passed a long curved gallery with large windows, but Moon didn’t glimpse any movement inside. Light glowed up from below, and the hut sank into a stone shaft. The water dimmed from blue-green to a deeper blue, then suddenly bubbled and frothed. Moon felt his ears pop.
The hut jerked suddenly. Moon grabbed Jade’s arm in reflex and Chime grabbed his. In instinctive reassurance, Jade said, “Easy, it’s all right,” but her spines were twitching.
The water suddenly vanished from the window and Moon glimpsed a rounded light-colored wall, lit by a dim blue-white glow. The wall had folds and sinuous curves, like fabric, or an intricate flower. Then the hut landed hard with a hollow thump and the shock made them stagger.
Moon peered out the window. “I think we’re there.” He flinched at movement outside the hut, but it was Lithe, waving to him. “We’re definitely there.”
Jade turned to the door and twisted the handle. The seal around the door popped with released air and it swung open.
They climbed out into a large round chamber, the floor slick and wet, the air damp and smelling strongly of salt and distinct traces of Fell. The faint blue light came from polished jewels like sapphires set into the curving walls, but much of the place was in shadow.
Malachite stood a few paces from her hut, which sat in a puddle of water. She glanced pointedly at Moon, then gave Jade a dark look. She must blame Jade for bringing Moon, not that anybody would have been able to stop anybody else from coming down here, with several huts still working. Jade ignored her.
Chime stared around, then looked up and gasped.
Lithe nodded in agreement. “It’s amazing.”