Moon took the long way back through the camp, which let him pass the fewest number of tents. Still thinking about traps and tactics, he came in sight of his tent and halted abruptly. The banked fire had been stirred up, and the coals were glowing. In its light he could see a figure sitting in front of the doorway. A heartbeat later he recognized Ilane, and relaxed.
He walked up to the tent, dropping down to sit next to her on the straw mat. “Sorry I woke you. I went down to the river.” That part was obvious; he was still dripping.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep.” It was too dark to read her expression, but she sounded the same as she always did. She wore a light shift, and used a fold of her skirt to lift a small kettle off the fire. “I’m making a tisane. Do you want some?”
He didn’t; the Cordans supposedly used herbs to make it but it just tasted like water reed to him. But it was habit to accept any food offered to him, just to look normal. And Ilane hardly ever cooked; he felt he owed it to Selis to encourage it when she did.
She poured the steaming water into a red-glazed ceramic pot that belonged to Selis and handed Moon a cup.
Selis poked her head out of the tent, her hair tumbled around her face. “What are you—” She saw Moon and swore, then added belatedly, “Oh, it’s you.”
“Do you want a cup of tisane?” Ilane asked, unperturbed.
“No, I want to sleep,” Selis said pointedly, and vanished back into the tent.
The tisane tasted more reedy than usual, but Moon sat and drank it with Ilane. He listened to her detail the love affairs of nearly everybody else in camp while he nodded at the right moments and mostly thought about what he was going to say to Dargan tomorrow. Though he was a little surprised to hear that Kavath was sleeping with Selis’ cousin Denira.
He didn’t remember falling asleep.
Chapter Two
Moon didn’t so much wake up as drift slowly toward consciousness. It seemed like a dream, one of those in which he thought he was awake, trying to move his sluggish still-sleeping body, until he finally succeeded in making some jerky motion and startling himself conscious. Except he didn’t succeed.
He finally woke enough to realize he lay on his stomach, face half-buried in a thick, felted blanket that smelled like the herbs Selis used to wash everything. His throat was dry and his body ached in ways it never had before, little arcs of pain running up his spine and out through the nerves in his arms and legs. In panicked reflex he tried to shift, realizing his mistake an instant later. If he was ill now, he would be ill in his other form. And he could see daylight on the tent wall; someone might be just outside.
But nothing happened. He was still in groundling form.
Nothing. I can’t— He tried again. Still nothing. His heart started to pound in panic. He was sick, or it was a magical trap, some lingering taint from whatever had killed the inhabitants of the sky-island.
He heard voices just outside—Selis, Dargan, some of the others, not Ilane. With an effort that made his head spin, he shoved himself up on his elbows. More pain stabbed down his spine, taking his breath away. He tried to speak, coughed, and managed to croak, “Ilane?”
Footsteps, then someone grabbed his shoulder and shoved him over. Dargan leaned over him, then recoiled, his face appalled, disgusted.
“What—” Moon gasped, confused. He knew he hadn’t shifted. Half a dozen hunters pushed into the tent, Garin, Kavath, Ildras. Someone grabbed his wrists and dragged him outside onto the packed dirt of the path. Morning light stung his eyes. People surrounded him, staring in condemnation and horror.
I’m sick and they’re going to kill me, Moon thought, baffled. It didn’t make any sense, but he felt the answer looming over him like a club. He managed to push himself up into a sitting position. They scrambled away from him. Oh. Oh, no. It couldn’t be what it seemed like. They know. They have to know.
Dargan stepped into view again. His face was hard but he wouldn’t meet Moon’s eyes. Dargan said, “The girl saw you. You’re a Fell, a demon.”
Except a club would have been quick—one brief instant of stunned agony, then nothing. “I’m not.” Moon choked on a breath and had to stop and pant for air. Ilane had done this. “I don’t know what I am.” Desperate, he tried to shift again, and felt nothing.
“The poison only works on Fell.” Dargan stepped back, signaling to someone.
Poison. Ilane had seen him shift, then gone back and readied the poison, and waited calmly for him to return.
He heard running footsteps and suddenly Selis landed on her knees beside him. Her voice low and desperate, she said, “She followed you, saw you change. She probably thought you were going to another woman, the stupid little bitch.” The others shouted at her to come away.
With everything else, Moon barely felt this shock. “You knew.”
“I followed you the first time you left at night, months ago. But you never hurt anyone and you were good to us.” Selis’ face twisted in grief and anger. “She ruined everything. I just wanted my own home.”
Moon felt something wrench inside him. “Me too.”
Kavath darted forward, grabbed Selis’ arm, and dragged her to her feet. Selis twisted in his grip and punched him in the face. Moon had just enough time to be bitterly glad for it. Then the others jumped him, slamming him to the ground.
One arm was dragged up over his head, the other pinned under someone’s knee. Moon bucked and twisted, too weak to dislodge them. Someone grabbed his hair, yanked his head back, and covered his nose, cutting off his air. He bit the first hand that tried to pry at his mouth, but pressure on his jaw hinge forced it open. One of them punched him in the stomach at the right moment and his involuntary gasp drew the liquid in. Most of it went into his lungs, but they released him, shoving to their feet.
Moon rolled over, coughing and choking, trying to spit the stuff out. Then darkness fell over him like a blanket.
Moon drifted in and out. He felt himself being carried and heard a babble of confused voices, fading in the distance. The sunlight was blinding and he could only see shapes outlined against it. He heard wind moving through trees, the hum of insects, squawks from treelings, birdcalls. His throat was scratchy and painfully dry. Swallowing hurt, and there was a metallic tang in his mouth, the aftertaste of the poison. It tasted a little like Fell blood.
Whoever carried him dumped him abruptly; stony ground and dry grass came up and slapped him in the back of the head. The jolt knocked him closer to consciousness. They were in a big clearing, a rocky field surrounded by the tall, thin plume trees of the upper slopes of the valley. He rolled over to try to sit up; somebody stepped on his back, shoving him down again.
Enough of this. Rage gave him strength and he shot out an arm, grabbed an ankle, and yanked. A heavy form hit the ground with a thump and a grunt, and the weight was off him. Moon tried to shove to his feet but only made it to his hands and knees before the world swayed erratically. He slumped to the ground, barely managing to hold himself half upright. Desperately, he tried to shift. Again, nothing happened.
A kick caught him in the stomach. He fell sideways and curled around the pain, gasping.
Someone grabbed his right arm and dragged him around, then clamped something metal and painful around his wrist. Moon opened his bleary eyes to see it was a manacle and a chain. He hadn’t even known that the Cordans had chains. They hadn’t even had enough big water kettles to go around, and they had wasted metal on chains?
Moon lay on his back in the dirt, his shirt shoved up under his armpits, pebbles digging painfully into his skin. By the sun, it was mid-morning, maybe a little later. He felt a hard jerk on the manacle, turned his head to see Garin and Vergan pounding a big metal stake into the ground. Moon took an uneven raspy breath and forced the words out: “I never did anything to you.”