Chime ignored him. “You smell it?” he asked Moon, twitching with worry. “We’re too late.”
Moon turned to Niran, speaking in Altanic. “The Fell are at our colony, we can scent them. I don’t want them to see you; if they do it might make them look harder for the others.”
Niran looked up at him, nodding ruefully. Even if he was still suspicious, he couldn’t argue with this. “I’ll wait here for you.”
It was the best solution, but Moon didn’t want to leave Niran on the ground alone. The Islander didn’t know this territory, and if they couldn’t return for him, he would be helplessly lost.
“Stay with him,” he said to Chime. That solved a second problem. Moon had a bad feeling about what they would find at the colony, and maybe Chime didn’t need to see it.
“What, you don’t want me in the battle?” Chime said, uneasily.
That was part of it, too. “Just stay here,” Moon said, and leapt into the air.
Past the next set of hills, the valley came within sight, and then the big step pyramid where it straddled the shallow river. Large, dark shapes flew in steady circles around it, like carrion birds over a dying grasseater—major kethel.
He had known they were too late, but it was still a sight to make his blood curdle.
Jade, Pearl, and the warriors stood on a bare hilltop, looking toward the colony. With them was a group of Arbora, a small group, only forty or so. They can’t be the only survivors. Moon banked to land near Jade.
“Were you in time?” she asked, her eyes still on the kethel circling the colony.
“Yes.” He didn’t want to tell her the plan, not where others could hear. Moon looked over the Arbora, and his throat tightened. There was Bone, the old hunter with the scar around his neck, but he didn’t see Petal, Bell, Rill, Knell or any of the others he knew. There were no children, and they didn’t look as if they had been in a fight. Most of them were hunters, still carrying rolled nets and short spears.
“Good.” Jade hissed through her teeth. “Where’s Chime?”
“I told him to wait for me. Do you know what happened?”
Sounding sick, Balm answered, “Bone and the others were in the forest when they saw the kethel fly in. They ran back to the river, but they met Braid and Salt and a few others who had been in the gardens, close enough to the colony to see what happened. They said that the first kethel brought smaller Fell, rulers or dakti, to the top of the colony. They started back inside to try to fight, but suddenly no one could shift. Knell was outside on the lower terrace. He shouted at them to run. Knell didn’t follow. He must have stayed to try to gather the soldiers.” Her voice was choked. “It doesn’t make sense. They should have fought. Even if they were taken by surprise—”
“They couldn’t fight, if they couldn’t shift,” Jade told her. “And the Fell would take hostages.”
A few paces away Pearl stirred, her spines lifting uneasily. “Keeping them from shifting is a queen’s power,” she said. “How could the Fell have it?”
Jade shook her head slightly, the shocked stillness of her expression turning thoughtful. “They could have a queen. They could have the queen from Sky Copper. Stone said he never found her body, or any trace of her.”
“Even a reigning queen couldn’t keep the entire colony from shifting, not unless they were all together in the same room. It wouldn’t affect the Arbora on the lower levels.”
Balm’s indrawn breath wasn’t quite a hiss. “A ruler is coming this way.”
A shape flew toward them. Behind him, Moon heard Root make a faint, frightened noise.
Jade said, with deadly emphasis, “Friend of yours, Pearl?”
Pearl’s tail lashed once. “It’s Kathras, the one that came to the court while you were wasting time on your pointless journey.”
With a growl in his voice, Bone said, “You want to fight each other or face this thing?”
The ruler drew closer, riding the wind to land lightly only a short distance away. He folded leathery wings, and paced toward them through the tall grass, picking his way almost delicately.
“Kathras.” Pearl greeted it, calm and even. “How did you do this?”
“They wanted to join us,” he said. “We hold no one prisoner.” He spoke the Raksuran language, like the dakti at Sky Copper. Moon had never heard a Fell ruler speak anything but Altanic before. The rigid bone crest behind the ruler’s head didn’t betray emotion the way spines or frills did.
His gaze moved over them, resting for a moment on Moon. Moon felt the scales on his back itch, the urge to raise his spines, the nearly overpowering need to rip the creature apart.
Jade watched Kathras with predatory calm. She said, “Who was your spy?”
Kathras inclined his head toward her. “Your new consort.”
Moon hissed in pure surprise, then felt like a fool. He should have expected this; he was the obvious choice, the only newcomer to the court. He felt the others staring at him, but Jade just sighed.
“Predictable,” she said, and added acidly, “I’m surprised you didn’t say it was me.”
Pearl ignored it all, her attention focused only on the ruler. “What do you want from us, Kathras?”
The cold eyes turned back to Pearl. “We have what we want.”
“Arbora, sterile Aeriat. That’s not what you want,” Pearl said. Her voice took on a different tone, warm and low. She eased forward, focused on Kathras, and Moon felt intense heat brush past him, even though she was more than six paces away. It was a faint echo of the connection he had felt when he had first seen Pearl. She was trying to use it on Kathras, trying to pull him in, seduce him, the way she had Moon.
Pearl said, “You want a queen. You need a queen. Let the others in the colony leave, and you’ll have one.”
Kathras cocked his head. “They don’t want to leave. Come into our colony. You will see that all is well.”
Drift stirred, uncertain. “If one of us has to go—”
“No.” Jade cut him off, not taking her gaze away from the ruler. “If you go inside, you won’t be able to shift, and they’ll have you, too.”
Drift shook his head, helpless, anguished. “How do we know?”
“It’s a trick, a Fell trick. It’s what they do,” Balm added in a hiss. “You think the others want to be trapped in there with them?”
“Drift, be quiet,” Pearl said. Her eyes were still on Kathras. “Your plan won’t work without a queen. You know you need me. Let the others go.”
“When we seek a Raksuran queen,” Kathras said, his fangs showing, “we will seek one of strong mind and body, fertile, and not so easily fooled.”
Pearl lunged at Kathras, but he darted backward, avoiding her claws by a hairsbreadth. As if nothing had happened, he said, “Come whenever you wish. You will all be welcomed.” Then he turned and leapt back into the air.
The warriors and hunters snarled. River crouched to launch himself after Kathras, but Jade said sharply, “No, idiot. We can’t fight them now.”
“She’s right.” Pearl watched Kathras fly away. She breathed as hard as if she had just been in a fight. “They can threaten to kill the clutches and fledglings, or just send a few kethel against us.
“We need to go, before they come after us.”
Chapter Eleven
The hunters made a sling big enough for Stone’s Raksuran form, and Moon and several Aeriat and Arbora carried him out of the temple and into the deep forest. They stayed on the ground, which made the going slow and difficult, but would make it harder for the Fell to track them. Two hunters followed the group, covering any sign of their passage, and another led the way, picking the best route through the undergrowth.