“Then what is this?” Flower pointed to the blight.
Stone abruptly turned away, back up the passage. There was a startled moment of hesitation, then they all scrambled to follow.
They passed Pearl and River out in the stairwell and Knell skittered to a halt to explain. Stone tore past out into the big hall with the Arbora workrooms. He jumped down into the well, shifted into his winged form in mid-air, then caught the lip of a gallery and climbed rapidly straight down the wall. Moon leapt after him, the others following.
He thought Stone was going all the way down to the roots, so was caught unprepared when Stone suddenly whipped over a balcony three levels down. Moon caught a pillar with his tail to stop himself, and swung up and onto the balcony.
Stone took a passage toward the interior, flowing down it like a dark cloud. His tail whipped back and forth, and Moon hung back to avoid being struck.
Then Stone stopped abruptly in front of a large hollow in the wall. Moon slid to a halt and backed up hastily, out of tail range, just in case Stone hadn’t wanted to be followed. But Stone shifted to groundling, and stepped forward into the hollow.
Now that the bulk of Stone’s other form wasn’t blocking the way, Moon saw there was a plaque at the back of the hollow, large enough to be covering a doorway, with a carving of intertwined branches with leaves and fruit. “The bolts are broken,” Stone said, and touched the carving.
As the others caught up, Moon shifted to groundling and stepped forward to look. Broken pieces from the side of the plaque lay on the floor near the wall, as if they had been kicked out of the way. He hissed under his breath, the realization making him cold. Like the carving in the stairwell. Like the broken bins and jars. He looked at Stone, whose face was still with suppressed fury. Someone’s been here before us.
From behind them, Pearl said harshly, “Stone, what is this? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know yet.” Stone shoved at the plaque, and with a raw creak it swung open, revealing a dark opening. It released the strong scent of stale air laced with a faint sweetness. Stone snarled and stepped inside. “Flower, make a light!”
Flower hurried forward, lifting the spelled rock she had used to examine the rotting wall. Moon moved aside for her, and she slipped through the doorway after Stone.
The light revealed an oval chamber, the walls rough and unworked, just dark, warm wood. There were no light-shells mounted anywhere either, as if no one was meant to be in here. Then Moon looked down at the floor. It was covered with white tendrils, like the exposed roots of a plant. The resemblance to something that lay in wait on the ground to whip up and grab unsuspecting passers-by made Moon jerk back, and he bumped into Jade.
She took his shoulders and moved him aside, and said quietly, “Stone, talk to us. What is it?”
Stone hissed, passing a hand over his face. “Someone’s been in here and taken the seed. It should be there, in the cradle.”
Moon craned his neck to look. In the center of the tendrils was an empty space, round, not much bigger than a melon. The tendrils around it were cut and had turned dark with rot. Stone continued, “The seed is what changes an ordinary mountain-tree into a colony tree, that lets the Arbora shape the tree and change it. Without it, the tree is rotting from the inside out.”
For a stretched moment the room was silent. He said something was wrong, Moon thought. Up in the consorts’ bowers yesterday, Stone had been uneasy. Not because of old memories, or seeing the place in this empty state after so long away. Because the tree itself must have felt different, wrong.
Flower groaned under her breath. River twitched uneasily and looked at Pearl, who stood like a statue. Then Jade let out her breath in a low hiss. She said, “Can you tell how long it’s been gone?”
Stone scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. “No. I’m not a mentor.”
Everyone looked at Flower, who lifted a hand helplessly. “I’ll have to look through our histories. I’ve never even seen a mountain-tree before, and I can’t augur the past.”
“They wouldn’t have taken it with them?” Jade persisted. “The court, Indigo and Cloud, when they left?”
“No.” Stone sounded certain about that. “There’s no other use for it, and it has to stay with the colony tree, or the tree dies.” He looked at her, his gaze sharp. “It can’t have been missing long. I came here two turns ago, to make sure nothing had happened, that the tree was still livable. It didn’t feel wrong then. And I think the blight would be worse if the seed had been gone for turns and turns.”
“It could be worse.” Chime sounded sick. “We haven’t had a chance to look at the roots yet.”
Everyone stared at him, and River growled.
“What did the seed look like?” Moon asked. Everyone turned to him, and he clarified, “Is it covered with jewels or metal? Is there any reason to steal it besides making another colony tree?” He was wondering if other Raksura had taken it, though that didn’t make much sense. Why take a seed to make a colony tree when there was a perfectly good colony tree, uninhabited and ready to occupy, right here?
“No, it looks like a seed,” Stone said. “Like it’s made of wood.”
“It must be a powerful artifact, though.” Flower bit her lip as she leaned down to touch one of the cut tendrils. “There are many magics something like that might be used for.”
Moon stirred uneasily. Like the way the Golden Islanders used the rock from inside flying islands to make their boats fly. That wasn’t a pleasant thought. If someone had stolen the thing for magic, it could have been cut to pieces, destroyed, anything.
“Maybe they stole other things.” Chime turned to the others. “We saw a carving that was damaged where the inlay had been pried out. Whoever did this must have passed that way.”
Jade nodded, her expression grim. “We’ve seen other things broken, in ways that didn’t make sense. As if someone was searching.”
Moon added, “They didn’t get as far up as the Aeriat levels. The stones are still in the carvings there.” The inlay was all up and down the main stairwell; the intruders couldn’t have missed it.
Stone’s eyes narrowed. “If they left other signs they were here—”
Pearl snarled suddenly, furious, and the sound echoed off the walls. Everyone but Stone twitched, and even he barred his teeth. Her voice a growl, she said, “These thieves left a trail! Find it!”
The trail might be old, but last night the hunters had been looking for predator scat and traces of recent occupation, not signs that intruders had searched the tree within the past couple of turns. Now that they knew what they were looking for, it wasn’t hard to find.
There wasn’t enough dirt or moss on most of the floors to show tracks, but on the level below, off a main stairwell, two hunters reported finding a room with more smashed storage jars. Others found several more carvings, on passage walls and the pillars supporting a lower stairwell, where inlaid stones had been pried out. “They were in a hurry,” Moon told Jade as they climbed down the well in the Arbora levels. “They could have checked every carving in the tree for inlay, but they didn’t.”
“It’s as if they knew exactly what they wanted, and didn’t waste any time once they found it,” she agreed grimly, and swung down onto the next balcony.
The trail led to a level far below the Arbora’s workrooms and the storerooms. This part of the tree had smaller passages and wells, narrower stairs woven through and around thick folds of wood. The floors were lumpy and the walls had been left rough and undecorated. Moon and Jade followed a passage toward the tree’s outer trunk, and found Knell and a group of soldiers and hunters there.