Moon slipped forward, moving quickly over the dusty ground, between the obelisks and over the rubble of the gate.
The partly-intact roof of the colonnade provided cover from anything flying overhead. The shade sheltered sand-colored lizards and green beetles that fled as he ran past. The colonnade ended in a long rambling building, still mostly roofed over, and he went from it to the next, and the next. Among the ruins were empty pools and fountains choked with sand, broken statues, and thornvines shrouding empty archways. The inner walls were painted with scenes of barges moving along a broad river, and desert plains, all in delicate faded colors. Some rooms were still packed with large clay storage jars, each taller than he was. At any other time, this place would have been a pleasure to explore, to poke into all its secrets.
Soon he passed through the sandy corridors of buildings darkened by the shadow of the hive. Then he reached an archway blocked by a solid wall of dusty gold-brown stone. He ran his hand over it and realized he had found the outer wall of the hive. The texture of the material was grainy, rubbery in places and stiff, almost brittle in others. All right, you got here, now look for a way in, he told himself.
He worked his way back through the building, finding steps that led down to what might have been a large, open plaza at one time, littered with broken stone columns. Now the hive sat atop it, forming a heavy roof over the paved space. They must have used this building to brace the hive, Moon thought, moving forward cautiously.
Small holes punctured the bottom of the hive, but he could see a much larger one ahead, maybe twenty paces across. Dim daylight fell through it to illuminate a circle of the worn paving.
That opening might be for ventilation, or to give access to the ruin as an escape route. Or to dump trash, because as he drew closer he could see the section of plaza beneath it was littered with big shells.
He reached one and crouched to examine it. It was curved and nearly four paces across, the iridescent surfaces scarred with recent claw marks.
Oh. I think I found the Dwei.
Moon had only seen Dwei from a distance, but he knew they had shells like these across their backs. He sniffed at the inside and winced. It smelled of recently dead flesh, and it had been scraped out with claws. Unless the Dwei ate their own dead and cast the remnants away like trash, which was possible but not likely, then the Fell had cleaned out the hive.
From somewhere far above his head, up inside the shaft, he heard a low, reverberating grumble. Moon froze until it faded into silence, then carefully eased back away from the pile of shells. Somewhere at the top of that shaft, a kethel lay sleeping.
So that’s not going to work, Moon thought, retreating quietly. But if there was one shaft up into the hive, there might be others.
After a little searching, he found one toward the far side of the plaza. No daylight fell through, but no Dwei shells littered the stone beneath it either. Moon jumped up to catch the edge and hoisted himself up.
The climb was much longer than he had expected, and also uncomfortable, with the waterskin bumping heavily against his side. The shaft led up a long distance, maybe a fourth of the way into the hive, then finally opened into a dark chamber.
Moon crawled out of the shaft to crouch on the edge, all his senses alert. The cave-like space was empty of anything but dust, and smelled of Fell mixed with a musty acrid odor. Dark openings in the far wall led deeper into the hive’s interior. He stood and crossed the floor to investigate.
Halfway across his foot slipped, and he stumbled on a suddenly uneven surface. It was a grate, a big one, made of the same material as the rest of the hive. Moon crouched and tasted the air. The acrid odor was stronger here.
Then a large clawed hand shot up through the grate to wrap around his lower leg. Moon nearly yelled in panic, managed to turn it into a low hiss, and tried to wrench free. The hand yanked at him, hard enough to drag him down between the bars. The waterskin of poison slipped off his shoulder. Desperate, he scrabbled for purchase on the bar, but the weight dragging him down increased a hundredfold and his claws slipped off the slick surface.
He fell down into a dark space and landed hard on rubbery ground. Something slammed down top of him, a big hand pinning his chest. A creature with a large round head with bulbous, multi-faceted eyes loomed over him. Its skin was dull green, with a soft slick texture.
A deep, raspy voice from somewhere to the left said, “What is it?”
“It’s a Fell,” another voice replied.
“I’m not a Fell!” Moon glared up at the creature looming over him. They were speaking something close to Kedaic, and he answered in that language. “I’m a Raksura, a consort. Look at the back of my head!”
There was a startled pause. His eyes adjusted, and he could see they were all around him, looming shapes. One said, “There are Raksura to the south.”
“Still shifters, still dangerous,” another replied.
“It smells strange,” someone else added.
“You stink, too,” Moon said, suppressing a snarl. They meant the metal-mud, but at the moment it was adding insult to injury.
Then the first voice said, “Let it up.”
The creature let go of him, and Moon rolled away, getting to his feet. He looked around, but there was nowhere to go.
The big chamber was full of the creatures. They were all taller and broader than he was, with heavy iridescent shells across their backs. Their wings were thin and fine, nearly translucent, and folded back along their bodies. Moon rubbed his chest where the creature had pinned him. They were strong, too. “You’re Dwei?”
The one that seemed to be the leader loomed over him, demanding, “Did you see others? Others like us?”
“What?” Then he remembered the shells. “I saw shells, down below in the groundling city. The Fell ate what was in them and threw them down into the ruin.”
It jerked back as if Moon had struck it, then turned away. A noise rose up from the others, like wood rattling, that resolved into a raspy groan. The sound conveyed dismay, disbelief, grief. It made Moon’s scales ripple uneasily.
Still facing away from him, the leader said, “Every two days, they took five of us away. They said they took them elsewhere, that if we did not resist, we would see them again.”
In the sense that eventually you’d all end up dead, Moon thought, swallowing down a hiss. The Fell were using the Dwei as a convenient food source while the flight stayed here. Some of the dakti could be left to fend for themselves or eat each other, but the kethel and the rulers had to feed at regular intervals. It made it even stranger that they hadn’t done this to the Raksura at Indigo Cloud, that they had left even the dead intact. But this was typically Fell behavior, dangling hope the same way they did to their groundling prey. He just said, “They lie.” The Dwei groaned again, more faintly this time, pain and grim acceptance. “What is this place?”
The leader didn’t answer, but one of the others, he wasn’t sure which, said hesitantly, “We kept our crops here, the dorgali and matra we grew in the cliff tunnels. The Fell forced us in here and blocked the door. They only come to take some of us away.”
The leader swung back around, staring accusingly down at Moon again. “Why are you here?”
He didn’t see any reason not to answer. “They attacked our colony. We drove them off, but they took some of our people. I followed them here.”