Dim and green, the failing light filtered through the heavy fronds forming the forest canopy, and the ground was thick with moss and tall ferns. The spiral trees curved up, more than a hundred paces high, their roots taller than Moon’s head. It was quiet except for the distant birdcalls, the treelings chattering at each other. The others had all gone ahead tomake a blind, something else the hunters were expert at.
Stone was still unconscious, his breathing almost too slow to detect. His wounds had stopped bleeding, but Flower had nothing with her, no medicines or even simples to help him.
Root, on the opposite side of the sling towards the back, stumbled on something and it jostled Stone. Moon hissed randomly at all of them. Stone being hurt had created a cold lump of fear in Moon’s chest that had taken him by surprise. It wasn’t just losing his best ally, or that Stone had seemed indestructible. Moon might not have been Stone’s first choice to bring back to the court, but Stone had plenty of time to lose him along the way to Indigo Cloud if he had wanted to. It was a shock to realize just how much it meant that he hadn’t.
“He’ll be all right,” Flower said, though Moon hadn’t asked. She picked her way along beside him in her groundling form. “He’ll heal faster while he sleeps like this.”
“How long before he can shift?” If Stone shifted into groundling now, his wounds would kill him instantly.
“Several days, at least.” She added, “We’re going to need your help.”
He glanced down to see her watching him intently. “I said I’d stay until you moved the court.”
Moon was getting tired of having to repeat that promise. He had come here knowing he would have to fight Fell at some point, but that wasn’t what frightened him. It was the other Raksura—they frightened him, confused him, made him feel threatened in vague ways he couldn’t articulate even to himself. “Nothing’s changed.”
“That’s good to know. But we’re also going to need your help with Pearl and Jade.” Flower’s expression suggested that what she was about to say left a bad taste in her mouth. “If you could try not to provoke anything between them. There’s a time for Jade to challenge Pearl’s reign, but this isn’t it.”
“That’s funny.” It wasn’t funny, though Moon was willing to admit to a certain bitter amusement. “Because I’m pretty certain Stone brought me here to do exactly that.”
“We did have something like that in mind,” Flower admitted. “And I, at least, was foolish enough to think that Pearl might be ready to end her reign and give way to Jade, once she was made to see that Jade was ready. That may be one of the reasons why she didn’t tell me what the Fell wanted.” Her tone turned rueful. “What a burden that must have been on her. And I just thought she was ill.” She looked up at him again. “We didn’t expect Pearl to want you, but then Stone and I are old enough to be long past that sort of thing. If the court had a clutch of young consorts, if Pearl was still used to having them around, your sudden arrival wouldn’t have had that effect on her.”
She had that wrong. Moon found it highly unlikely that Pearl wanted him for anything other than dinner. And if they had a clutch of consorts, he wouldn’t be here. He would be picked-over, vargit-chewed bones. But arguing about it wouldn’t help, and there was something else he wanted to know.
“Did you really have a vision that I should go warn the groundlings?”
“I don’t make visions up, Moon,” Flower said with some irritation. After a moment, she shook her head. “I’m not sure it was about letting you go to warn the groundlings. Visions aren’t that specific, even mine.”
Ahead, their Arbora guide swung down from a tree and motioned anxiously for them to follow. “It’s this way.”
As they wound through the trees, Moon was glad of the guide. The blind was hard to make out, even this close. The Arbora had used a low spot overhung by trees, and weaved deadfall branches and fresh greenery to make a roof and walls. They had moved rocks, and used large sections of the moss carpet, until the whole thing looked like a hillock buried in the forest.
Niran helped two female Arbora gather greenery for more concealment. He looked up as they approached, staring at Stone with wary curiosity.
The waiting hunters lifted a section of brush, and Moon and the others carried Stone into the shadowy interior. Flower slipped in ahead of them and, after some rustling, a fall of moss hanging from the roof branches started to glow, giving them enough light to set the sling down. The ground had been carefully cleared, scraped down to bare dirt. The Arbora had methodically removed the top layer of moss and ferns, and used it to conceal the roof of the blind.
The Arbora pulled the open section back into place, restoring it with quick adjustments and repairs to the dislodged greenery. The only light was the dim white glow of the spelled moss. Moon knelt beside Stone’s head, making sure he was still breathing. He thought he saw the dark eyelid shiver, but couldn’t be sure.
Flower crouched beside him and tugged at his arm. “Come on, the others are making plans. We need to be there.”
Moon didn’t think Pearl and her supporters would feel that he needed to be there at all, but he had thought of something he needed to tell them. He hesitated. “Who’ll stay with him?”
“Blossom and Bead.” She nodded to the two female Arbora who were showing Niran how to wind greenery into the blind. Bead was young, but Blossom showed some signs of age, with threads of gray in her dark hair. “The only teachers to escape. And we’ll put the older hunters in here. They’re experienced at tending the wounded.”
Moon followed her reluctantly.
The blind already had partitions, screens of woven fronds, dividing it into chambers. As Flower led the way through, Moon’s spines kept catching on the woven branches and vines, so he shifted to groundling.
Somewhere nearby, Chime said impatiently, “No, that won’t work. If we try to get inside the colony, we’ll be caught by the same power that’s keeping the others from shifting.”
Balm’s voice was tense with frustration. “Even if we could shift once we were inside, there’s just not enough of us to fight all those Fell. We need help.”
Flower stepped through an opening small enough that Moon had to duck to follow her. This part of the blind was still partially open to the outside and braced against the rough gray wall of a plume tree’s trunk. Besides Chime and Balm, Jade, Pearl, Bone, and River sat on the bare ground. The others were in groundling form, and Jade and Pearl had shifted to Arbora. Pearl sat back against the wide column of a root, her body tense, her tail wrapped around her feet. Her usually brilliant blue and gold scales seemed dimmed, muted. Jade sat across from her, and Moon was struck by the sight of her face in profile, her long jaw tight with tension, her eyes narrowed. She sat with her arms propped on her knees, every muscle coiled with seething frustration. She wanted to challenge Pearl. That was obvious to him, and had to be obvious to everyone here. But she knew this was no time or place for it. The court had to be united under one queen and Pearl was it, whether they liked it or not.
Jade looked up and their eyes met. Moon was caught for an instant, then managed to look away. After a moment, she asked, “How is Stone?”
“Still the same.” Flower stepped around to sit next to Chime, tugging her skirt over her moss-stained feet. “We just need to keep him still and warm, until he heals.”
Moon sat next to Flower, hoping Pearl would just pretend he didn’t exist. But she watched him, her blue eyes cold. With an ironic air, she said, “So tell us. How did the Fell know you were new to the court?”
Moon considered pointing out that one of Pearl’s warrior friends who was a Fell spy could have reported it. Instead he said, “They saw me at Sky Copper, with Stone. A ruler spoke through one of the dakti.”