He could understand why groundlings might be reluctant to venture out into the night. The mist had sunk into the low spots of the city, the walkways and lower platforms, so heavy it obscured everything but the brightest lights. Unless these people had a Raksuran-like sense of direction, they could easily become lost in their own city. He sprang up from the roof, spreading his wings to catch the strong wind, and turned toward the city’s central ridge and Ardan’s tower.
It loomed out of the misty dark, a tall octagonal structure with a domed roof of green-tinged copper topped by a slender gold spire. But there were no open terraces and balconies like the other big towers. He flew closer, slipping sideways in to make a wide circle around it. There were windows, narrow arches set deeply back into the heavily carved façade, but they all seemed to be covered by metal shutters. That’s not helpful. He had hoped to at least get a glimpse of the inhabitants—
He slammed into something and the stunning blow sent him spinning away. Dazed, he plunged down, falling toward the rooftops. He struggled to extend his wings, then managed to roll out of the dizzying tumble and caught the air just in time to break his fall.
Moon glided down, then dropped onto a slanted rooftop. He hooked his claws in the slate shingles as he folded his wings and pulled them in protectively. The skin under his scales tingled, as if he had fallen into something acidic. He shook his spines out with an angry rattle, but he wasn’t sure who he was more mad at, himself or the damn groundlings.
Still shaken, he crept to the edge of the roof, climbed down to a lower rooftop, and finally down a wall to a walkway cloaked in mist. There, he shifted to groundling. The sudden change in sensation made him stumble; the tingling was worse, like being bitten all over by firebugs. And he had a headache.
Snarling under his breath, he found his way through the narrow caverns of the walkways. The damp air seemed to congeal on his skin, weighing his clothes down. He crossed a bridge over a mist-wreathed chasm and came out onto the open plaza at the base of the tower.
Two bridges led off from the plaza and several stairways wound up and away from it amid the smaller buildings clustered around. Vapor-lights hung from arches and eaves over some of the ground-floor doorways. The doors were all sealed, except for one. It was off the second landing of a stairway, and was lit and open; piping music came from it, and an occasional muffled voice.
From this angle, the tower itself looked even more like a blocky, windowless fortress. The entrance was large but sealed with heavy ironbound doors and there was a big vapor-light mounted on each side.
The plaza wasn’t uninhabited. Moon immediately sensed movement down several of the byways. And Stone, still in groundling form, was just across the way, sitting back against the wall, near a bundle of rags. Swearing silently, Moon crossed over to him.
“So they don’t want visitors,” Stone said, apparently having decided to be unperturbed by this development.
“I’m fine, thanks for asking.” Moon leaned on the wall and eased down to sit. The paving was gritty and smelled of mold. The shock of running into the tower’s barrier had left him feeling every moment of all the days of long flights, tension, and little rest. “Who’s that?”
The bundle of rags was peering around Stone, staring at Moon. Its eyes were big, dark, and slightly mad. It smelled like a groundling; based on the size, Moon was guessing one of the gray ones with the waterling scales and crest.
“This is Dari.” Stone jerked his head to indicate his new groundling friend. “They threw him out of that wine bar up there.”
“Halloo,” Dari said, or something similar. Moon realized that Dari wasn’t mad, but just very, very intoxicated.
A group of blue groundlings tumbled out of the wine bar’s doorway, the vapor-light gleaming off their pearly skullcaps. They careened down the steps, talking loudly. Moon leaned his aching head back against the wall. “The crewmen were speaking Kedaic. They used a word I thought meant ‘magnate,’ but maybe it means ‘magister.’” That would explain how the thieves had found the colony tree, why they had been so bent on getting the seed. If Ardan was a powerful groundling shaman, he could have wanted the seed for magic, used his powers to locate it, and sent the thieves after it. Moon just hoped Ardan hadn’t noticed that something had flown into his damn magical barrier.
Stone said, dryly, “That would agree with Dari, who says a powerful magic-worker lives in that tower, and that everyone’s afraid of him.” Dari nodded emphatically.
Stone added, “I checked. That barrier goes all the way down to the pavement in front of the doors.”
The drunken groundlings staggered across the plaza. Two spotted Moon and Stone, and broke off to rush aggressively toward them. Dari yelped and cowered.
When they were less than ten paces away, Stone growled, a low reverberation that Moon felt through the paving. The two groundlings stumbled to an abrupt halt and peered uncertainly. Groundling eyes often weren’t as good in the dark as Raksuran, and they probably couldn’t see much except three shapes sitting against the wall. They hesitated, wavering, then retreated, throwing uneasy looks back. They rejoined the rest of the group, which was making its way loudly and erratically across the plaza.
Dari made a noise of relief, pulled a pottery jug out of his rags, and drank deeply.
Stone waited until the groundlings had wandered out of sight, before he said, “He’s had our seed most of a turn, depending on how long it took his thieves to get back through the forest. We need to get in there.”
“But not tonight.” Moon had had enough for now. They needed to rest, get more information about Ardan, then think of a way to get past the protective barrier. “Dari, show us where the nearest abandoned house is.”
There were several not far away, a crowded huddle of houses around a dark octagonal tower. Dari pointed it out for them, then wandered off back toward the wine bar.
They made their way down a little alley that wove between the other buildings. It opened occasionally into small courtyards, barely thirty paces across. Moon could hear people sleeping in some of the houses, but others sounded empty. The odor of mold was worse here, almost as bad as the musky stench of the monster. The rock everything was built from seemed too strong to crumble, but the perpetual damp caused mold and mushroom-like plants to grow on it.
They came to the tower’s base, and there was no mistaking the fact that it was abandoned; the entrance archway was bricked up.
Moon glanced around, making sure the houses overlooking this plaza had either blocked windows or blank walls. Then he shifted and jumped up onto the side of the tower.
The openings below the third floor had all been blocked up, the seams filled with layers of dirt and mold. He climbed up to the first open window. Stone flowed past him and disappeared into an opening on an upper floor. Moon slipped inside, scenting nothing but rot.
The room was large and high-ceilinged, the floor strewn with broken furniture mixed with shrouds of disintegrating fabric and rotted trash. It was too dark to make out the carving on the pillars and the walls. Moon explored, finding that the layout was fairly simple, with big rooms on each floor around a central staircase. Prowling around each level to make certain nothing else was living here, he kept stepping on odd indentations in the floor. They were small and round, and there were a lot of them. He wasn’t sure what they were for, except to trip the unwary, until he found the rusted broken remnants of a metal clip in one. Huh, he thought, flicking the metal with a claw. They must be for anchoring down furniture, and anything else that might fall over when the leviathan moved.