“Skylings, mountain wind-walkers.” Stone sat by the fire, breaking sticks up into small pieces and absently tossing them into the flames. “They live too far up in the air to notice us.”
Moon rolled onto his side to squint suspiciously up at the sky. The stars were bright, streaked with clouds. “Then what do they eat?”
“Other skylings, tiny ones, no bigger than gnats. They make swarms big enough to mistake for clouds.” As Moon tried to picture that, Stone asked, “Did you ever look for other shifters?”
Stone hadn’t asked about this before, and Moon wanted to avoid the subject. Looking for his own people had led him into more trouble than anything else. “For awhile. Then I stopped.” He shrugged, as if it was nothing. “I couldn’t search the whole Three Worlds.”
“And the warrior you were with didn’t tell you which court, or the name of the queen, or anyone in your line?” Stone sounded distinctly irritated. “She didn’t even give you a hint?”
Moon corrected him pointedly, “No, my mother didn’t tell me anything.”
Stone sighed, poking at the fire. Moon got ready for an argument, but instead Stone asked, “How did she and the Arbora die?”
That wasn’t a welcome subject either. It was like an old wound that had never quite stopped bleeding. Moon didn’t want to talk about the details, but he owed Stone some kind of an answer. He propped his chin on his arms and looked out into the dark. “Tath killed them.”
Tath were reptilian groundlings, predators, and they had surrounded the tree Moon’s family had been sleeping in. He remembered waking, confused and terrified, as his mother tossed him out of the nest. He had realized later that she had picked him because he was the only other one who could fly, the only one who had a chance to escape while she stayed to defend the others.
He had been too young to fly well, and had crashed down through the branches, tumbling nearly to the ground, within reach of the Tath waiting below. One had snatched at him and Moon had clawed its eyes, struggling away. He had half-flown, half-climbed through the trees back up to the nest. But his mother and the others were all dead, torn to pieces.
If he had realized how hard living without them would be, he would have let the Tath catch him. He just said, “It happened... fast.”
They were both silent for a time, listening to the fire crackle. Moon had the feeling that Stone was as uncomfortable offering sympathy as Moon was reluctant to accept it. He wasn’t surprised when Stone tossed a last stick into the fire, dusted his hands, and veered off the subject completely. “Do you know why it’s called the Three Worlds?”
Moon relaxed again, settling down into the turf, relieved to be on safer ground. “Three continents.” It was a wild guess. Moon had never seen a map big enough to show more than the immediate area.
“Three realms: sea, earth, and sky. Everyone remembers the sea realms, but they’ve forgotten the sky realms. It’s been so many generations since the island peoples fought among themselves. They’re mostly gone now, with no one left to tell the stories.”
Moon wondered if he had been right about the sky-islands all along. “Is that where we’re from?”
His gaze distant, Stone said, “No. We’ve always come from the earth.”
At dawn they flew out across the grassland, where old pillars stuck up out of the ground, part of an ancient scattered roadway or aqueduct. So many peoples had come and gone from the Three Worlds that it was littered with their remnants.
By afternoon they found an intact road, cutting through the ocean of tall green grass, more than a hundred paces wide and built of the same white stone as the broken pillars. As the day darkened toward evening, they spotted a groundling caravan traveling upon it.
The caravan included box wagons, heavily carved of dark wood, pulled by large, shaggy draughtbeasts with substantial horns. It had stopped and was preparing to camp for the night, with the groundlings unharnessing the beasts, putting up tents, building cook fires.
Moon and Stone flew high enough that the groundlings hadn’t noticed them. They both blended in with the twilight sky, but Moon banked to give the camp wide berth anyway. He doubted the caravan had weapons that could do any damage at this distance, but there was no point in frightening them. Then he saw Stone circling down, heading for a landing in the tall grass some distance from the edge of the road. Is he out of his mind? he thought, startled.
Stone dropped into a low spot at an angle to the road, so swift and silent the groundlings probably hadn’t seen him.
Moon went down as fast as he could, alighting in the flattened grass that marked Stone’s landing site. Stone had already shifted to groundling and stretched extravagantly, rolling his shoulders. The grass around them was as tall as a small tree, standing well above their heads. Moon shifted, demanding, “What are you doing?”
Stone gave him a pointed look, as if the answer was obvious. “I want the news. They’re Sericans, probably coming from Kish.”
“What, you’re just going to walk up to them?” Moon had trouble believing he was serious.
Stone lifted a brow. “I could stand on the roadside and try to signal, but—”
Moon shook his head incredulously. “They’re going to know what we are. How many groundlings do you see wandering around out here?”
“Maybe fifty or sixty, judging by the wagons.” Stone shouldered his pack and explained patiently, “These people travel long distances, and they see a lot of strange things. Some of them will suspect we’re different. As long as they don’t feel threatened, they won’t act on it.”
It still sounded crazy. Moon had approached groundlings like this before, but only after making certain he didn’t look like anything but another traveler, even if it meant landing a day’s walk or more away. “What if you’re wrong?”
Stone started away through the grass. “I’ve been wrong before,” he admitted, not helpfully.
Moon reluctantly trailed him to the edge of the road. It was built up more than ten paces high, more of a causeway through the grassland, something that hadn’t been apparent from the air. Crumbling sets of steps had been built at intervals, half-buried in the grass; whatever they led to was long vanished. Stone climbed the nearest and started across toward the camp. Still expecting disaster, Moon crouched uneasily at the edge of the road.
The wagons were arranged in a half-circle, and the camp smelled of wood smoke, incense, and onion roots frying in nut oil. The groundlings had blue skin, a much darker blue than Kavath’s, and their hair was black. They wore bright colors, long coats and pantaloons of red or blue or dark green, embroidered and trimmed with gold or black braid. They had spears, and short bows that looked as if they were made of horn. The furry draughtbeasts shook their hides and lowed as Stone approached.
Several men came out to greet him, warily at first, but they seemed to grow easier as he spoke to them. The wind carried their voices away but Moon could hear fragments. The head drover, speaking Altanic, asked if they were from Kaupi or Loros, and Stone replied only that they were travelers, heading west. Finally they took Stone into the camp to sit by the fire with an older man who was probably their leader. Moon saw the man’s sharp eyes glance his way, and heard him say, “The young one is skittish?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Stone answered.
Moon noticed he didn’t accept the caravaners’ offers of food and drink. In turn, the caravaners refused Stone’s offer of a pressed tea cake from his pack. Moon watched the old man watch Stone. He knows, and the thought made Moon’s nerves itch. Only two of them out here, Moon without even a bag to carry food, fighting their way through the grass rather than walking on the road. The groundling knew he was sitting there at his fire with something strange, not just a man from a different race. But he seemed to be intrigued rather than frightened. How Stone could do this, Moon didn’t understand.