Stone shook his head, and started away from the burial piles toward the nearest tents.
Moon followed, noting signs that a battle had taken place. Some tents closer in had collapsed, and one had caught fire, its canvas and poles now a smoking heap. Everywhere there was disarray, broken pottery, smashed carts, confused herdbeasts wandering the streets, groundlings who were injured or in obvious distress. There was also some damage to the structures on the hills. The greenery and trees made it hard to see, but Moon spotted a collapsed terrace on the nearest, and on another bricks and roof tiles had spilled down, blocking a stairway.
But most of the groundlings are alive and the Fell are dead, Moon thought. There were Kishan fire weapon emplacements on the hills, but the Fell hadn’t been burned. That was the part that didn’t make sense.
Stone wound his way through the tents with his usual lack of concern in strange groundling places, heading for an open plaza. More groundlings gathered there, some of the stocky green-skinned ones and some who were skinny and light blue-gray and looked as if they were wearing their skeletons on the outside. They were clearly distressed, talking to each other in a high-pitched language Moon didn’t understand, and letting out occasional wails. The cause was obvious: groundling bodies had been laid out on the hard-packed earth of the plaza. The motionless forms had been covered by blankets to protect them from the carrion birds and lizards.
Stone stopped beside a green-skinned groundling, and asked in Kedaic, “What happened?”
The groundling looked up at him. Her head was narrow and almost square, and her eyes large and lidless. She said, “The Fell came here before the last sunset, and attacked, but then they died in the sky. They dropped.” She gestured toward the rows of bodies. “But when we came out of hiding, we found all the Jandera traders dead, with no mark upon them. The Viatl think they’re next.” She wiped at her face, conveying exhaustion and anger. “They panic.”
The Jandera, Moon thought, startled. You thought it didn’t make sense before.
Stone stepped toward the bodies and Moon couldn’t help a hiss of caution. Stone ignored it. He knelt by the first motionless form and pulled the blanket back.
It was a Janderan woman, her dark leathery skin unmarked, eyes open and staring, sunken and clouded with death. The skeletal Viatl and the others all went quiet, watching Stone. Moon eyed them but it was clear they were hoping the stranger had answers.
Stone leaned close to study her, to sniff and examine her mouth and eyes. Then he shook his head and tugged the blanket back over her. Stone pushed to his feet and said, “Tell the Viatl that if it hasn’t happened by now, it probably won’t happen.”
There was a startled murmur from the green-skinned groundlings. “It’s sickness?” one asked.
Stone said, “No, I think it’s something the Fell did.”
Another turned to speak to the Viatl, who greeted the information with confusion. Some wailed in relief, while others seemed understandably unwilling to put much trust in the word of some random person from the trade road.
Stone came back to Moon. In Raksuran, Moon said, “You know what this is?”
“No. But it’s not doing them any good to panic.” Stone looked across the plaza. “We need to find out if the Hians were here.”
He was right; this was a puzzle, and it was too much of a coincidence that it had happened on the route they thought the Hians followed. “Somebody would have noticed their flying boat.”
Stone frowned. “How do you know that?”
Moon sighed. How Stone had traveled all over the east without picking up on these things continually irritated him. He said, “The trading flags. They have two sets, one near the ground, and one on those tall poles. The ones on the poles have to be for flying boats.”
The caravanserai that maintained the trading flags was in as much disarray as the rest of the town. It was carved in the base of the hill nearest the river docks, on the side facing toward the water. There were pens for draft beasts and tents on the flat ground below it, and a wide set of stairs led up to the entrance. Big windows and a balcony overlooked the river, and it was full of traders and locals, sitting on carpets made of woven reeds and trying to ease their shattered nerves with intoxicants and talk. The place stank of fear and the inhabitants were jumpy and suspicious, far more so than the locals outside who were hauling bodies and trying to calm the Viatl.
From picking up snatches of conversation, Moon managed to glean the information that the green-skinned locals were called the Bikuru. This town was an important rest stop for traders, with the nearest cities being some distance away, and the country not being much inhabited.
Asking after the proprietor of the caravanserai led Moon and Stone back outside and around the base of the hill, where a collection of tents forming the better part of the grain trading market had collapsed under the weight of a very dead kethel torso. The Bikuru proprietor was helping to drag it free of the debris and seemed to welcome the distraction of answering questions.
Stone asked her, “There were Hian traders at the last place we stopped, meaning to meet a flying boat somewhere along here. Was there a flying boat here before the Fell attack?”
The proprietor said, “No traders like that came to the caravanserai. But there was a ship of the air of Kish. It fled when the Fell appeared.”
One of the groundlings sitting beside the debris looked a little like the slender Coastals of Than-Serest. It said, “No, the airship stayed. I was trapped under a collapsed tent in the market, and I saw it was there when we crawled out. We were all looking up to see if the Fell were really gone.”
The proprietor made an arms wide gesture, her equivalent of a shrug. “There were no mails for a ship to take, so it was here for trade or passengers.”
“Mails?” Moon asked.
“Messages. For ships.” The proprietor pointed up at the trade flag poles standing high above the river docks. “They take and leave from the poles.”
Moon shaded his eyes. Now that he looked, he saw there were baskets atop the poles, just below the flags, with ropes attached so they could be hauled up and down.
“Were the Fell chasing the boat?” Stone asked. Moon thought that question was a little too pointed, and nudged him in the back. Stone ignored him.
“Chasing it here?” The Coastal made a neutral gesture. “Maybe? But the craft gave no warning. It stopped, like it meant to take on or drop passengers. I didn’t see it go.”
“Did it use its fire weapons on the Fell?” Stone asked.
“Not that we saw,” the proprietor said. She gestured at the kethel. “But in the end it wasn’t needed, I suppose.”
Moon pulled Stone away a few steps, and said in Raksuran, “Why didn’t they use their weapons?”
Stone said, “Somebody used something. The Fell didn’t fall out of the sky for no reason.”
“And the Jandera—” Moon stopped. He had a terrible thought. Hians had reason to fear Jandera, since they had stolen Callumkal. “You don’t think . . . this was the artifact. This is what it can do. This is why Vendoin wanted it.”
From Stone’s expression he had already thought of that. “It would make sense. The Fell heard it was a weapon, but they got that from the Hians. They didn’t know what kind of weapon it was.”