Edge of Worlds (The Books of the Raksura) (47 page)

“It worked, didn’t it?” Moon said under his breath.

They turned into a cabin and a moment later Jade deposited him on one of the padded benches. He opened his eyes and caught her arm. She shifted to her Arbora form and he drew her down next to him. She curled around him, said, “Balm, wake me if something happens,” and fell instantly asleep.

Balm smiled in relief. “I will.” She squeezed Moon’s shoulder and left the cabin.

Stone and Chime had followed them in. Now Chime said, “I think I’ll be right here,” and pulled a cushion down to curl up on the floor. He shifted to his groundling form and groaned.

Bramble ducked in, glanced around as if counting them, and then ducked out again. Moon wasn’t sure where the others had ended up and had to resist the knee-jerk urge to get up and check on them.

Stone leaned over for a close look at Jade. Satisfied, he said, “I’m going to go collapse dramatically on Rorra,” and walked out.

“I think Stone likes her,” Moon said through a yawn.

Already half-asleep, Chime sighed. “It wouldn’t be the oddest thing that happened on this trip.”

The next thing Moon knew, Merit was leaning over him, saying, “Are you awake?”

“No.” Moon rubbed his face. To his relief, Jade was still curled around him, breathing heavily. He knew it was night outside the city again, that they had only been asleep for a few hours. The bright liquid lights hurt his eyes and his throat felt raw. He managed to rasp, “What?”

Merit was in his groundling form, frowning with worry. “The Kishan think they might be able to get the lock open. I have to talk to you and Jade before we leave the city.”

From the floor, Chime said, “Why do they call it a lock? Why would you build a river for a boat and then put a lock on it?” He sounded woozy and half-conscious.

Merit ignored him. “It’s about my vision. I need Chime to hear this too. And Stone, but he’s still asleep and I’m afraid to wake him.”

Chime wondered, “He’s sleeping with Rorra?”

Merit’s jaw set. “Hold on.” He turned around, leaned over Chime, and shook him hard.

“All right, all right,” Chime protested. “Stop, I’m awake!” Chime sat up, his hair sticking out in all directions. He blinked and groaned. “What were you saying?”

Moon carefully moved the arm Jade had around his chest and sat up a little. “What about your vision?”

Merit crouched beside the bench. “You all thought that trap you ran into was meant to keep anyone from going up into that part of the city, right?”

Moon nodded. Jade stirred and muttered in her sleep. Scratching his head vigorously, Chime said, “Mmmhmm.”

“But instead you realized you could climb or fly out of it, that only someone who could climb or fly like a Raksura could get out of it,” Merit said. “From what I saw in the vision, it wasn’t a trap, it was a—a trail sign. It was telling you where to go.”

“But—” Moon hesitated.
It took us to a place where there was only one way to go, and once we were through it, there were open stairwells and halls
. “Go on.”

“That’s what I saw in my vision,” Merit said, his expression anxious. “Any groundlings who walked into it would be stuck. I think there might be a way out for them, I’m not sure what it is. But if you knew to take one of the paths through the city, and you were told that at the right point, something would show you the way . . .”

Chime was wide awake and staring. “I didn’t have any warning. I mean, my . . . power, my sense, whatever it is, I didn’t have any warning.”

Merit turned to him. “Because it wasn’t a trap. And I think maybe it was hiding from me, from my scrying. The closer we came to this city, the less I could see. It was like I’d forgotten how to scry. Once you all walked into that hall, suddenly my vision was back.”

“So you think it was meant for Raksura?” Moon said. His skin was prickling with unease.

“Or forerunners.” Merit shook his head and shrugged. “Maybe the foundation builders were their allies, and something happened, and the builders had to leave. But they left something here for the forerunners, and left a way to show them where it was. Maybe what the tiles with forerunners on them at the outside dock area were saying was ‘if you’re a forerunner, go down one of the halls above the canal and you’ll find it.’”

Chime frowned, frustrated. “But what was supposed to be up there? The waterlings destroyed everything in that room we found, except that thing Root picked up.”

Moon said, “Uh . . .” They all stared at each other.

Jade said, “This shitting city,” and sat up. “Are the waterlings still out there?”

Merit told her, “Stone said they were in the hall above the boat. He’s up on the roof of the top cabin, so he could listen to them while he slept.”

Jade prodded Moon to move. “I have a bad feeling.”

Moon had a bad feeling too. He sat up and moved over for her. This would explain why the waterlings had woken so suddenly, when they had done nothing to disturb them. “You think it made the waterlings come after us? That whatever attracted Root to it also attracted them?”

Jade climbed over him. “I think for an ancient object that had a magical trap guiding Raksura-like beings straight to it, it gave up way too easily when a Raksura picked it up.”

They went to the upper deck common area, the one with the cooking stove, where the others had gone to rest. Balm and River had been keeping watch out on the deck, but the other warriors and Bramble were here. They were all mostly awake now, in their groundling forms and still bleary-eyed. Delin was here too, awake and making notes in one of his books, half-lying on a bench with his bare feet propped up on a cushion. A pot of water was heating on the stove and there was a bowl of something that smelled like pickled melon that Bramble was trying to get the warriors to eat.

First Moon had gone up to the top deck of the ship to get Stone, who reluctantly rolled off the cabin roof, yawned, and stretched. “Now what?” he asked.

“Are the waterlings still up there?” Moon asked. “Because we think we know why.”

As Moon and Stone followed Jade and Merit into the cabin, everyone looked up, and Bramble held out the bowl of melon. She said, “I’m making tea.”

Jade said, “Wait, we need to talk.”

Chime hurried down the corridor with Balm and River behind him. Once they were all together, Jade slid the door shut, lowered her voice and said, “In that room we found, where the waterlings had destroyed almost everything except the silver cage thing Root picked up.”

Everyone nodded except Balm and River, who must have only heard parts of what had happened. Root ducked his head and tried to look unobtrusive. Jade finished, “Did anyone else pick it up?”

Moon looked around the room. In the dark, in the confusion, with everyone waving their lights around at random, it would have been easy for someone to slip the object into a pack. Especially if compelled to by an influence that had made them immediately forget what they had done. Moon had already checked his own, Jade’s, Chime’s, and Stone’s packs, which had been dumped in the cabin downstairs, even though he didn’t think it was likely to be there. Moon had walked out with one hand around Root’s arm, and the others had all been in the front part of the room, too far ahead to get back to where the object had lain without anyone else noticing. And Rorra had been carrying Delin, though he suspected the spell was like the trap, and had been aimed at Raksura, or a species related to Raksura.

The warriors and Bramble stared at Jade, confused. “No,” Song said, a little hurt. “You said not to.”

“Why would we—” Bramble began, then went still as the implications hit her. “You think—”

Delin sat up all the way, dislodging his cushion, alarmed. “You think the compulsion caused someone to take it?”

Jade said, “Check your packs.”

The packs had been dumped by the wall and Briar got up to pass them over to the others. The packs didn’t hold much, most of the warriors having only brought what they thought they might need on the search for the way out of the city, leaving the rest of their belongings on the sunsailer. Song turned hers out, revealing a still-glowing cup, a nearly empty waterskin, a crumpled spare shirt, a little pouch for flints, and some fragments of cloth waterproofed with mountain-tree sap that had been wrapped around food. Bramble’s and Root’s packs all held variations on the same, though Root squeezed his eyes shut with trepidation before he dumped his out. Briar sat down, opened hers, and stared down at it. “Jade . . .”

Moon stepped between Bramble and Root, and crouched beside Briar. Inside her pack was the dull silver cage, the crystal gleaming faintly in its center.

Briar’s eyes were wide with horror. “I—I didn’t—I don’t even remember—”

Moon felt a surge of sympathy for her. He knew it hadn’t been her fault and he hated to see anyone singled out like this. He told Briar, “You couldn’t help it. And you were right behind me and I didn’t see you.” He looked up at Jade. “This thing really wanted out of there.”

“It’s not your fault, Briar,” Jade said. Her jaw was set, as if it was taking a lot of effort not to hiss. Or maybe scream. Moon wanted to scream a little himself. They had been tricked into taking this object with them and there just couldn’t be anything good behind it. They had come here to prevent the mentors’ vision of a massive Fell attack on the Reaches from coming true, and he had a bad feeling they had just made that vision more possible.

Watching Briar’s pack nervously, Song said, “You think it made those waterlings come after us?”

Delin climbed off the bench and limped over to look more closely at the object. “Possibly whatever influence it projects that drew us to it also drew them, as an unwanted side effect. It may explain their attraction to the city, why they came here from the ocean. Possibly it also drew the Fell.” He looked up at Jade and added bluntly, “You understand we will be accused by the Kishan of stealing this thing, for our own purposes.”

Jade grimaced. “We came here to prevent the Fell from getting inside this city, because we were afraid there was something dangerous inside it that they could use against us. That was our purpose. All I want to do is leave this thing here.”

“Can we put it back?” Balm asked, obviously thinking furiously. “We could get back up there . . . Except for the waterlings . . .”

Stone leaned against the wall, sighing wearily. “It’s too late for that. If the trap was meant to guide forerunners to this thing, it would work for the Fell, too.”

“But what is it?” Chime asked helplessly. “What does it do?”

No one had an answer for that. Moon said, “If we were forerunners, I guess we’d know. Or be able to figure it out.”

Chime stepped over to peer cautiously into the pack. “I wonder if the Fell know, or if they just think it’s a weapon, like what the creature in the forerunner city offered them.”

Delin’s face, already wreathed with new lines from exhaustion, wrinkled further in consternation. “Perhaps this was what it meant to offer them.”

There was a general moment of silent dismay. They couldn’t just leave it in poor Briar’s pack, so Moon started to reach for it. “No, better not to touch it,” Delin said.

Root rubbed his hands on his pants anxiously. “I touched it.”

Briar winced. “I must have touched it too.”

“Well, nobody touch it anymore,” Bramble said. “Here.” She pulled a leather bag out of a supply pack. “Tip it into this.”

Moon took the pack and managed to work the object out and into the bag Bramble held open without touching it. As Bramble laced the top down, Chime asked, “But what do we do with it? I know the Kishan will want it, or think they want it, but whatever it is or does, we can’t let them have something that’s going to attract Fell. They’ll never get home alive with it.”

Jade rubbed her temples. “I don’t know. Unless we just drop it in this canal.”

Moon didn’t think that would work. “If the Fell get into the city when we get out, it might draw them to it, like it did the waterlings. And us.”

“We could drop it in the ocean.” Root looked up at Jade. “It’s not far from here, is it?”

Moon stared, then exchanged a look with Chime. Chime said, “That’s not a bad idea.”

“The ocean’s deep, right?” Root continued. He turned to Stone. “Deeper than the sea-mounts are tall. And there aren’t any sealings.”

Jade’s spines flicked thoughtfully. Stone stared absently into the distance, considering it. He said, “I’ve never heard of sealings going into the ocean, or any talk of anything out there that had any interest in shallow-sea dwellers or land-dwellers. Except to eat them.” He folded his arms, leaning back against the door. “It isn’t a bad idea.”

“We don’t even know what it is.” Delin sounded depressed. He made his way back to the bench and sat down heavily. “There were carvings in that room. I should have stopped to record them. Or we should have brought Vendoin, to copy any writing on the walls that we were unable to see.”

“There wasn’t time,” Bramble told him. “The waterlings destroyed the books that were in there. Those were probably important too. And all the other broken things in that room.”

Moon added, “It might not even work like it’s supposed to anymore.” But he was thinking of the freshwater sea and the bridle that had been used to control the leviathan there. It had still worked after all these turns, even though the magisters who had originally constructed it were long dead.

Jade flicked her spines in decision. “If we get out of here, if we get past the Fell, we’ll drop it in the ocean.” She glanced at Merit. “Merit can scry on it in the meantime. Maybe he can get some idea if that will work or not.”

Merit nodded, and he looked less alarmed at the prospect than he would have a turn or so ago. Merit had gained a great deal in confidence since Moon had known him. Jade turned to Delin. “From what you’ve said, I’m assuming you don’t intend to tell Callumkal.”

Delin’s frown deepened a little. “I feel it is something that should be hidden and left alone. My passion is to know and describe living species; the past draws my curiosity but it does not mean as much to me as it does to Callumkal and Kellimdar and Vendoin. And as much as I would like to understand its purpose, this object was not meant for us. If Merit is right, it is meant for people who are as dead and gone as those who built this city.”