Moon had noticed that too. They were too old and worn down to make much out of, but he could see straight lines and ovals and sharp angles that didn’t look at all like the curling floral designs on the rusted metal. “I think these used to be stone stairs, or something, that collapsed. The groundlings must have built all these metal ones to replace them.”
Lithe used a chain to help her swing across a gap that was a little too wide. “But how did these groundlings find this place?” she wondered. “If Floret hadn’t seen the Fell go to the island, if Shade hadn’t left a trail, we might never have found it.”
Chime said, “Maybe there was a city on the surface once, and the jungle grew over it.”
Moon felt a chill that had nothing to do with the deep still water. He paused and looked around again at the abandoned metal devices, the rusted tools scattered on the pathway. He realized the disintegrating leather oval that lay near his claws was a groundling shoe, cast aside in headlong flight. He said, “Or the groundlings were called here, like the Fell. And they ran away. Whatever they found, they ran away from it.”
They all went still for a moment, absorbing that idea. Even Malachite paused and tilted her head to consider it.
Jade hissed low under her breath. “After all the trouble they took to build these stairs… It must have been something terrible.”
“It can’t have killed them all,” Lithe said, her spines flicking uneasily. “We’d find more remains.”
Malachite leapt down to the next ledge. But she said, “Tell us exactly what you saw and heard from the Fell.”
As they climbed, Moon told them everything he remembered, trying to repeat it as close to verbatim as possible. When he was done he gave Chime a prod, and Chime nervously described what he had heard of the strange voice.
They were getting closer to the bottom of the cavern. The water didn’t smell stagnant, and there was enough movement in it to show that it was connected to the open sea somewhere. But the faded carving and the remnants of the original stone stairs went all the way down past the dark surface, the water lapping against them. Maybe the sea was shallower when they were built, Moon thought.
The last rusted metal stair curved into a deep alcove cut into the wall, ending on a smooth stone platform with steps that led down to vanish under the water. The Fell-stench was pronounced here, as if the Fell had spent some time on this platform.
Hanging from the curved roof of the alcove, suspended from more of the heavy chains, were several bell-shaped metal huts. The rock-lights Lithe and Chime carried reflected off the rusted metal, throwing huge shadows onto the cavern walls. Moon looked around, baffled. The trail clearly ended here.
He turned back to the huts. They looked a little like cargo lifters but were too small to take much of a load at one time. And the round sealed doors were too narrow for boxes and bales, but just right for an average-sized groundling to step through. He had a bad feeling about this.
Jade crouched to examine the edge of the platform, searching for traces that someone had passed this way. “So the Fell swam from here?” she asked, keeping her voice low. Chime and Lithe searched the dark corners of the platform, and Malachite stood still, listening for telltale splashes.
Moon saw the huts were suspended from a heavy metal beam that had been mounted to the old stone walls, and that it held chains and wheels and gears and other strange machinery, so verdigrised it was hard to tell one piece from the other. There were also dark green vines, twining around the chains, and growing down and through the roofs of each little hut. They all came from an odd plant covering the ceiling of the alcove. It looked like a fungus flower, covered with tiny white petals, spread to catch sustenance out of the damp air. This is new, Moon thought, baffled. It looked like the groundlings who had built the huts and the stairs had deliberately placed the vines this way.
Several sets of chains and vines led from the beam straight down into the water, as if those huts had dropped or been lowered below the surface. Some of them looked like they had been that way for turns, the chains encrusted with salt, the vines white and withered. But three sets of chains had had the rust scraped off in patches, as if they had recently been cranked along the beam, and the vines… Moon leaned out over the water to touch one. It was vibrating and making faint hissing noises.
Oh, you have to be joking… Moon stepped around and caught hold of a metal handle on the nearest hut. Jade came to help him, and Chime and Lithe stopped their futile search to watch.
With Jade holding the hut by one of the protrusions on its ribbed metal surface, Moon twisted the wheel-shaped handle and pulled. The door came open with a puff of displaced air and revealed a molded, rusted interior. Moon tasted that air, and then coughed. It smelled of mold and rust and salt but it wasn’t stale. A small window in the opposite wall was set with a heavy piece of faceted crystal, spotted with white stains.
Lithe came over to peer through the door. She said, “There are handholds inside.” She looked up at Moon, startled, as she came to the inevitable conclusion. “Groundlings ride in this?”
It seemed incredible, but that was how everything added up. Moon nodded toward the three sets of recently used chains and vines that led below the surface. “I think the Fell took those down into the water.”
Jade’s expression was dubious, but she said, “Wait here, I’ll take a look.” She crouched down and slipped below the surface.
Moon dropped to the edge of the platform and stuck his head in the water. It was too murky to see anything but the flick of Jade’s tail as she used one of the chains to pull herself down. He sat up and shook the water out of his head frills.
They waited tensely for what felt like a long time, but then Jade surfaced with a splash. She pulled herself up onto the platform, breathing hard. “I went down until I ran out of air, but I couldn’t see the huts. I did see light, though, as if there’s an opening to the outside somewhere down there.”
Moon twitched aside as Malachite stepped up beside him. Her growl was so low Moon couldn’t hear it; he just felt it in the bones behind his ear. She said, “I’ll have to do as the Fell did, and take one of those… things down.”
Getting inside that small metal cage was the last thing Moon wanted to do, but there was no way around it. He said, “If the Fell can figure out how to use these things, we can.”
Malachite moved aside, and gestured with a claw at Lithe. Lithe leaned into the doorway of the open hut, then cautiously stepped inside. The hut swayed a little under her feet. Jade jerked her head at Chime, and he followed Lithe in. Her voice ringing off the hollow metal, Lithe said, “There’s just a lever.” Moon craned his neck to see her cautiously probing a slot in the rusted metal wall. The lever rested at the top of it.
Pointing up at the curved ceiling, Chime added, “That vine. Air is flowing down it. It smells like outside air.” He stepped out again to look at the plant. “It must take the air in through the petals, and push what it doesn’t need out through the vines. Sort of the way mountain-trees do with water.”
Malachite motioned for Lithe to get out of the hut. “All of you wait here.”
Jade exchanged a look with Moon. She didn’t need to speak her reservations aloud. Obviously groundlings had operated these contraptions safely but that had been a long time ago, and there was no telling if they still worked as intended.
Lithe stepped back against the wall of the hut. She said, “I’ll go with you. You might need me.”
Malachite’s spines rose in clear “obey me now” mode. Lithe persisted, “The Fell thought they needed a crossbreed to get inside this place, whatever it is. If they’re right, maybe I can get in too. You don’t want to come all this way and be stuck somewhere, unable to get to Shade.”