Stone dropped to the ground not far from the tree. Instead of shifting, he threw himself down and proceeded to make a dust wallow. Moon landed nearby and furled his wings, surveying the valley while Stone cleaned his scales. There was no open water source nearby, not much grazing, and the tree had a forbiddingly spiky canopy, which meant there would be few if any grasseaters and predators, except those traveling through to somewhere else.
Moon got the waterskin out of his pack for a drink, thinking that their next stop would have to be at a water source. Putting the stopper back in, he faced the single spiky tree. Then he went still. At some point, the tree had moved.
The branches above the ball of thorns pointed toward Moon and Stone and the sand wallow now. Something gleamed at the end of each spike. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been there before either, but perhaps the reflective surface had been concealed inside the bud-like structures that surrounded them, like eyelids. Exactly like eyelids. “Stone.”
Rolling in the dust wallow, Stone stopped, looked, and after a moment flicked his spines in dismissal.
Moon backed away from the tree cautiously. They had seen tree-creatures before and Moon always found them a little disconcerting. Their branches were almost like tentacles and he expected them to burst up out of the ground and attack him, even though so far it hadn’t happened. There was always a first time.
There were no bones or other remnants of hunting around the tree, or even in the rest of the valley, and there was no predator musk. Moon was still glad the dust wallow was some distance away.
Finally Stone finished, shook the dust off, and shifted to his groundling form. Moon took his own dust bath, then shifted and managed not to groan out loud. His back was sore, an ache that spread out down his arms and legs, though they had been riding the wind most of the time. If they were on the wrong track, it was all a waste of time, a waste of effort.
“Do you think we’re going the right way?” he asked Stone, mostly just to make conversation.
“I did three days ago,” Stone admitted, stretched out in the sandy wallow.
“Do you think we should have waited for the others?”
“No.”
It was a moot point, anyway. If they were on the wrong path, and the others were on the right one, they wouldn’t be able to find the wind-ship. But Moon missed them, even though he knew Jade would probably want to kill him by now.
Stone said, “Come over here and lie down. Otherwise we’ll never catch anything.”
Moon realized he had been standing there a while, absently scratching the back of his neck and staring at nothing. He sighed and went over to lie down in the sand wallow with Stone.
The sand was warm on his abused muscles and he dozed off, listening to the wind in the grass. After a time, Stone elbowed him. “We’ve got something.”
Moon slit his eyes just enough to spot the shape arrowing down at them out of the cloudless blue sky. “Is it one of those birds again? The last one tasted like dead leaves.”
“You’ll eat what I catch and like it.” Then Stone growled in irritation. “It’s a damn flower-head.”
Moon snarled tiredly. “I thought we flew out of their range.”
Stone hissed. “It’s probably lost.”
The creature stooping on them was roughly the size of an Arbora, with a head shaped like a rounded, multi-petaled flower, a little like an aster. It had the brains of an aster, too. As it neared them, Stone twitched out of the wallow and shifted. Moon didn’t bother.
Flapping wildly, the flower-head tried to stop mid-air, managed not to slam into Stone but lost control and hit the ground. It skidded about fifty paces through the sand and grass and landed near Moon. Moon sat up and told it, “Piss off.”
It scrambled back and cowered, which was even more annoying. But you couldn’t eat something that talked, no matter how stupid it was, and there was no point in killing it otherwise. Stone shifted to his groundling form and ambled back to the sand wallow.
The flower-head said, in bad Altanic, “What are you?”
Moon growled, “None of your business.”
It backed away a few steps, and hesitated. Moon hissed, preparing to shift and snarl, but it said, “Do you know which way the big river is?”
Stupid as rocks, Moon thought, and said, “It’s north, that way.” He pointed.
The flower-head turned, ran a few steps flapping, and awkwardly launched itself again. Stone sprawled in the wallow and sighed. “I told you it was lost.”
Moon didn’t dignify that with a response and stretched out in the sand again. This method of hunting while resting sometimes didn’t work, but when it did, it saved a lot of time.
The flower-head had caused enough commotion that it took a while to lure anything else down. Both Moon and Stone were able to get a short nap in before a large bird finally took the bait and dove on them.
It wasn’t a big meal, but it was enough to keep them going until they reached better country. Moon sat on his heels in the grass and tossed the last cracked bone away. Stone had finished eating and was rolling in the dust wallow again, getting ready to leave. Moon stood and stretched and looked across the valley.
A figure walked toward them across the grassy plain. It was coming from upwind, but Moon knew what it was. This is the most crowded empty valley in the Three Worlds, he thought sourly. He said, “Stone.”
Stone turned to look, then hissed out an angry breath.
We knew they were probably following us, Moon thought. Or it was following us. He just hadn’t expected a kethel to be so good at it.
Stone tasted the air, then shifted to his groundling form. His bared fangs weren’t any less intimidating. “It’s just the one. If there were more, I’d scent them.”
“So it spotted us and went down in the hills. I didn’t think their eyesight was that good.” The uneasy sensation of being stalked made Moon’s spines want to twitch. “This thing is smart.” It was hard to believe it wasn’t half-Raksura. But maybe this was what happened when a half-Raksura trained a kethel to hunt.
It stopped a good distance away, far enough to have time to shift if they tried to rush it. It looked much the same as it had in the swampling port, though its pale skin was coated with a layer of dust and sweat. Its braids were frazzled and it was still wearing a loose wrap around its waist. So it hadn’t just done that to blend in better with the groundlings around the port, Moon realized. Or that hadn’t been the only reason. As if they were travelers who encountered each other all the time, it pointed back toward the hills. “There’s water back there. A little stream under a rock.”
Stone stood silently, radiating suppressed fury. Knowing he was going to have to do the talking, Moon asked, “What do you want?”
The kethel scratched under one of its braids. “To help you.”
Moon set his jaw. “Stop saying that. We know it’s not true.”
The kethel appeared to give up on that point, at least for now, and eyed the dust wallow. “What were you doing?”
“It’s none of your business.” You would think the middle of nowhere would be safe from intrusive questions.
Stone hissed and turned to grab his pack. “Stop talking to it.”
“I can help you,” the kethel said. “Find the groundling weapon—”
Stone shouldered the pack and used the motion to whip around and shift to his winged form. But the kethel anticipated it and shifted almost in the same instant. Moon crouched to leap but the kethel bounced backward in a move Moon had only seen Aeriat use, putting distance between it and Stone. It bounced again, snapped its wings out, and flapped toward the hills. It wasn’t wearing a collar, Moon noticed.