Someone in the back said, “It’s killing them, not just making them sleep like it did Strike. And why did only one of them shift?”
“Only one so far,” someone else answered. “Maybe that one got less than the others.”
“Flower always did make strong simples,” Bone said, turning away from the dying dakti. “And there’s power in anything made by a mentor.”
It’s probably lucky we didn’t kill Strike, Moon thought. But then Flower hadn’t been thinking about killing Raksura when she brewed the poison. “Keep moving.” He turned back to the passage.
Out in the stairwell he saw flashes of gold, copper, and blue as Aeriat dropped through the central well; a moment later dakti screamed in chorus. Moon snarled, wanting to join the fight, but he kept to Jade’s instructions and led the way down the stairs to the next level.
This was the fourth level up from the river terraces, and the landing led to several doorways and passages. Moving rapidly from one to the other, Moon found nothing but empty rooms with storage baskets and cushions tumbled around, smashed pottery, and broken tools.
Then with a little cry of horror, a hunter jerked back from a doorway. Moon leapt forward and grabbed the hunter’s spines to drag him out of the way, expecting a flood of dakti or the missing kethel. But the room was empty, except for bundles strewn across the floor.
Then he saw the bodies, some wrapped in blood-stained clothing.
He stepped inside, feeling the dirty floor grit under his claws. Arbora started to push in after him, and he snarled, “Stay out there!” It could be a trap. The room was empty except for the corpses, the carved figures of the ancient groundlings staring dispassionately down from the stone beams. There were no other doorways, but the dakti could swarm in through the air shafts.
The Arbora scrambled back, obeying without argument. Moon moved forward, tasting the air, but all he could smell was Fell and death. We’re too late, he thought, sick at heart. He knew there was nothing he could have done; he and Jade had returned as fast as they could. And the Fell didn’t come to Indigo Cloud for you, he reminded himself. That didn’t help.
But as he stepped further into the room, he saw this death wasn’t new. From the smell of rot, these people must have died days ago, not long after the colony had been taken. There were at least forty or fifty bodies, mostly Arbora, male and female, and a few taller, slimmer shapes that had to be Aeriat. Most were in groundling form, only a few in Raksuran. All were twisted and broken, skin or hide slashed by claws. He heard a step behind him and glanced back, baring his fangs, but it was Bone. The other hunters still held the stairwell.
Moon looked back down at the bodies again and recognized a face. It was Shell, one of the soldiers who had tried to chase him out of the colony his first day here, when Chime had hurried to defend him. Shell was in groundling form, ripped from chin to crotch, his eyes still open. His hands were curled claw-like, dark residue caught under his fingernails, in his teeth.
Moon looked away. The Fell didn’t eat them. But they ate the Raksura at Sky Copper. He had a very vivid recollection of the dakti with the arm clutched in its jaws. And Stone had found few intact bodies when he had searched the mound. It doesn’t make sense.
Bone circled the rows of bodies. His voice thick with misery, he said, “These are mostly soldiers. They must have fought.” Then he froze, looking down, hissing in dismay.
Moon moved to his side, and found himself staring down at Petal’s face. She was in her groundling form, gray and rigid in death.
He looked up. Bone’s spines rippled in fury.
“We’re wasting time,” Moon said, and turned for the doorway.
On the next level down they found a score of dakti trying to flee down a passage, flushed out of hiding by the Aeriat on the other side of the building. Moon helped corner them, then let the Arbora thoroughly tear them apart before he made them head down the stairs again.
On the level below, Moon hissed for silence. He could hear something below, a flurry of movement, hissing. He took the last turn, coming down to where the stairs ended in a junction of two large passages. One led out to a big room with an opening to the outside, letting in cool air. But he sensed movement down the left hand passage, a lot of movement.
“That’s the soldiers and hunters’ bowers,” Bone whispered.
That meant the hall would have many tall doorways opening to small, curtained-off rooms, some at floor level and some above it. If it followed the same plan as the other bower halls, the rooms were just stone partitions, not completely enclosed. Moon asked, “Air shafts in from the outside walls?”
“Yes!” Bone turned, signaling half the hunters to head toward to the outside opening.
Moon went down the passage to the bowers. Through the doorway ahead he could see a partition wall, and not much else. The hissing had stopped, and he was certain the dakti knew the Raksura were here.
Moon swung up to the top of the doorway and glanced inside: the hall was full of dakti, most clinging to the ceiling carvings, ready to drop on whoever walked in. They saw him and shrieked in rage.
Moon leapt into the hall and shot across the ceiling, hooking his claws into the carvings, tossing startled dakti off right and left. From their screams of alarm, they had been prepared for Arbora, but not an Aeriat. The floor was already littered with pale, mottled bodies: poisoned dakti shifted to groundling. This flight must be huge. Without the poison’s help, the Raksura would have been easily overwhelmed.
The Arbora followed Moon in a wave. More dropped down through the air shafts from outside. A dakti landed on Moon’s back and was plucked off by an Arbora before he could even reach for it.
Moon reached the far end of the hall and saw the dakti falling back, grouping around one of the bowers, protecting something inside. Renewed shrieks from the dakti made him glance back. The Aeriat had arrived, dropping down the air shafts. They must have heard the commotion and come around the outside of the colony. “Here!” he shouted. He was certain the dakti were protecting a ruler.
Moon leapt down onto the top of the wall, knocking the dakti away. Bone charged up the stairs, ripping into the dakti as those below crammed into the doorway, trying to block him. Moon still couldn’t see the ruler. Two large basket beds blocked his view of part of the bower. He dropped down into it, close to the wall, and something surged out from under the nearest bed.
It was the groundling form of a kethel, big, muscular and naked. Its face was boney, eyes set back deep in their sockets, fanged teeth long and yellow. Moon ducked the wild punch aimed at his head and came up slashing, ripping open the kethel’s belly. It still attacked, grabbing at his shoulders, lunging in to bite him. But his scales deflected its teeth. He got an arm around its throat and threw his weight down to snap its neck.
The kethel collapsed. Moon jumped over it and tore the beds aside. A ruler shot up at him and, unlike the kethel, it wasn’t in groundling form. It knocked Moon backwards, flat on his back.
It gripped his throat, its weight pinning his legs. Desperately, he clawed at its hands, trying to get a knee up to push it off. It was too strong, it had him pinned. He could feel its claws about to pierce his scales. He saw a flash of gold and indigo from above, then Pearl landed on the ruler, straddling it. She gripped the bony crest behind its head and reached around to grab its chin with her claws and twist. The ruler’s eyes turned stark with terror, right before they went blank with death.
Pearl tossed the body away, slamming it into the bower’s wall, then leapt up and out of the chamber.