“What thing?” Flower demanded from behind them.
“You didn’t tell her?” Moon said, his attention on the corridor ahead. It still sloped down, curving back toward where the mortuary temple lay on the surface.
Chime protested, “I didn’t have a chance—”
Then Jade said, “Quiet, there’s light ahead.” She handed the light-rock back to Stone, who tucked it away in his pack. After a moment, Moon’s eyes adjusted, and he saw the dim white glow somewhere down the corridor.
Following it, they found the passage ended in a wide doorway that led to a much bigger space, scented of earth and cold water and more decay.
They stepped through and made their way down a crumbling set of steps into a cavernous chamber, the ceiling curving up out of sight. It was lit by fading mist-lights, their vapor heavy in the air. The lamps stood on metal stands only ten paces high and secured to the floor with clamps, leaving most of the chamber in heavy darkness. Dozens of thick, square pillars supported the ceiling, and every surface Moon could see, the walls, the pillars, was covered with plaques carved with unintelligible writing. It felt like a deep underground cavern, but they hadn’t come down nearly far enough for this space to be completely below the surface. “We’re under that dome,” Moon said softly.
Her tail lashing, Jade turned to Balm, River, and Chime. “Scout this place.”
River flicked his spines in annoyance, but he leapt to the nearest pillar, and scrambled up to jump to the next. Esom ducked nervously as River passed over his head. Balm and Chime bounded away in different directions. Moon tasted the air, but the stench of decay and the competing odor of the fermenting edilvine overlaid any more subtle scents.
Jade looked around again, thoughtful. “This carving—is it writing?”
“It’s in the city’s native language. I think it’s names, the names of the dead.” Esom stepped closer to the nearest column and squinted to see in the dim light. “The plaques must cover their burial vaults.”
Moon wondered why the inhabitants of this place had chosen that method. He had seen groundling cities that stacked their dead in aboveground mortuary vaults, and it never seemed like a good idea to him. For a city on the back of a leviathan, it was worse. But it might be a holdover from their homeland of Emriat-terrene, an attempt to show their dominance over the leviathan by keeping the same customs they had practiced on solid ground.
Flower frowned. “So this is where the dead are supposed to be put, and instead they sell them to water travelers?”
“That’s the rumor,” Stone said, suspiciously studying the shadows overhead. “From the death-stink in that passage, I’d say the rumor’s true.”
Moon said, “They can’t be selling all their dead.” Surely the water travelers had to have some other food source besides dead groundlings from this city. “Maybe just the ones who can’t pay for a place here.” Or maybe there was no room left, all the space taken up with the ancient bones of turns and turns of dead.
Flower lifted a brow, dubious. “You have to pay for a place to be dead in?”
Moon shrugged. “Sometimes, in cities. It’s a groundling thing.”
Balm bounded back to Jade’s side and reported, “There’s a stairway and a passage, but it goes up, toward the doorway in the plaza that the groundlings were guarding.”
“There has to be a trap at that entrance,” Moon said. Ardan would be expecting them to come in that way, and had placed the barrier at the water traveler dock to keep them from using it as an escape route.
Scrabbling sounded overhead, and River’s voice called out, “There’s something here!”
They crossed the dark space, following River’s progress back over the ceiling, Esom sprinting to keep up.
They were headed toward the center of the huge chamber, toward an open space ringed by more pillars. In the very center, standing on the paving, was a tall, domed structure made of stained, coppery metal. It stood forty paces high, and was at least that wide. Wrapped around the verdigrised metal was a figured sculpture of a sea serpent, coiled over the curve of the roof. Its triangular head hung over the top and glared sightlessly down at them.
“This is what you want,” Esom said, breathing hard as he caught up to them. “This looks like part of another structure, much older than the mortuary.”
As the others spread out to examine the structure, Moon stepped close to look at the surface. The metal showed pitting and discoloration that might be from harsh weather, as if it had been exposed to the elements for turns before the mortuary temple had been built atop it. He felt air move across the scales on his feet and looked down at the base of the dome. There was a gap there, too regular to be a crack, and it seemed to stretch all along the foot of the metal shell. “He’s right—it’s not sitting on the floor. The floor’s built around it.”
Jade had circled the dome and returned to stand next to Moon. “We’re close; we have to be,” she muttered. “Does anybody see a door?”
Chime arrived a moment later and dropped lightly down from the ceiling. “I found a small passage going off toward the east, but there were no lights, so I couldn’t tell—” He stared at the dome, then threw an uncertain glance at Jade. “We think the seed is in there?”
“We think something’s in there,” Flower said in frustration, and flattened her hands against the discolored metal.
Then Balm leaned close to one of the metal coils of the serpent. “Wait, I think there’s a seam under here. Someone come and—”
“Quiet.” Flower turned suddenly and stared intently into the shadows past the pillars. The tension in her body made Moon turn to follow her gaze, but the shadows were empty. The air was undisturbed, not even by a drift of dust motes in the mist-light. The stillness made an uneasy prickle creep up under his spines. Then Flower said, “Something’s coming.”
The others stirred uneasily. Stone shifted, the sudden blur of dark mist making Esom flinch and stifle a yelp. Looming over them, Stone took in a breath with a hiss.
River shook his head, but watched the darkness warily. “There’s nothing here. We searched.”
Flower didn’t even glance at him. Her voice had a grim edge. “It’s coming through the air.”
“The wardens,” Moon said. They had known this place might be under their protection. “Ardan’s guard creatures.” But even as he said it, he felt a shiver across his scales as the air turned cold and dry, as if something was drawing the damp out of the stone surfaces. That hadn’t happened when the wardens had appeared in Ardan’s tower.
Impatient, Jade told Flower, “You look for a way to get into this damn thing while we kill these creatures.”
Moon said, “Getting out of the temple is going to be the problem.” The air grew tight, making it a little difficult to breathe. Ardan could have put a hundred of the things down here. “We don’t know how many—”
“Getting out is not the problem,” Flower said flatly. She shifted to her Arbora form, her scales white as bone, catching no gleam from the light. “That’s the problem.”
It formed out of the darkness just past the pillars, a shape so large its head brushed the lowest point of the ceiling’s arch. Moon’s spines flared and he snarled in astonishment as the diaphanous shape solidified into blue scales and massive clawed hands. He saw the fish-like tail with giant fins, stretched away between the pillars. It was the giant waterling that hung in Ardan’s tower. From the sickening scent that wafted from it, it was still dead.
It went from insubstantial to solid faster than Moon could shout a warning. It lunged forward with a muffled roar, its unhinged jaw gaped. Stone flared his wings, leaping at its face.