Secrets of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 3) (17 page)

Soon the companions were walking
among the metal spikes and hanging strands. Silk brushed against
them, and Nitomi squeaked and made to slice a strand with her dagger.
Koyee pushed the woman's blade down.

"Sheathe your dagger,"
she whispered. "Do not cut or scratch anything here." She
looked around her and smiled softly. "This is a nursery."

When she raised her lantern,
Koyee could see forms curled up within the cocoons. Larvae hid
inside, each as big as her. She could see nothing more than their
vague outlines through the silk. When she brought her lantern close
to one cocoon, the larva inside squirmed as if blinded by the light.
The companions kept walking, navigating between the metal spikes that
held the silk, passing thousands of the hanging cocoons.

"If those are the babies,"
Nitomi whispered, "then . . . oh by the flame, how large are the
adults?"

Koyee hefted her shield and
pointed ahead. "See for yourself."

They crested a slope, parted
curtains of silk, and beheld the hive of the weaveworms.

Nitomi shuddered and covered her
mouth, and even towering Qato, a man who could remain silent for
turns on end, grunted. Koyee stared in wonder, torn between disgust
and marvel.

A ring of steel spikes rose
ahead, as wide as an arena, and upon each spike perched a weaveworm
mother. Their bodies were white and segmented, as large as whales,
and their black eyes spun, shrewd and bright. Clutching their
perches, they undulated and pulsed, producing offspring in an endless
stream. The babes—wet, gray, and wriggling—fell onto the ground and
promptly crawled away, leaving room for their siblings to emerge.
Koyee watched one newborn larva find a metal spike of its own, climb,
and begin to weave a cocoon.

Within this birthing ring
bubbled a pool of pale liquid. It smelled of sulfur and salt. Adult
weaveworms—these ones winged and thinner than the mothers—flew
above, carrying cocoons and dropping them into the boiling pool. As
each cocoon splashed down, shrieks rose as the larva burned within.
The winged adults hovered above, waiting as the cocoons cooked like
dumplings. Once the larvae inside had died, the flying weaveworms
fished out the boiled bundles and carried them away.

"They're cooking their
babies!" Nitomi whispered, standing among the strands of silk.

"Hush!" Koyee said.
"Look behind the pool."

Beyond clouds of steam, a great
structure loomed over the pool of boiling cocoons. It rose as high as
a palace, formed of salvaged scrap metal. Old shields, the hulls of
boats, and suits of armor formed its base, held together with clumps
of rope. Great spokes of metal turned on springs, moving strands of
silk to and fro. Hammers rose and fell, wheels turned, and steam
blasted as the machine operated. A belt moved along metal tracks,
carrying boiled cocoons from the water into the machine. As each
bundle entered the gauntlet, moving blades tore it apart. Hooks
tugged on strands of cooked cocoons, spun them together, hammered and
braided, and tugged the fabric onto spinning wheels. Up and up the
structure the silk rose, track by track, wheel by wheel, until at its
crest plates of red-hot steel—perhaps salvaged tabletops—clamped
together, pressing the strands into sheets.

"It's a loom," Koyee
whispered. "It's a great, mechanical loom the size of a palace."

Nitomi whimpered. "They're
turning their babes into cloth."

At her side, the towering Qato
lowered his head, and his voice was a mournful rumble. "Qato
sad."

Clad in armor, Koyee touched
their dojai outfits of black silk. "Where do you think silk
comes from? The cocoons of weaveworm larvae . . . cooked by their own
caretakers."

Nitomi shuddered.

Koyee stared back at the loom
and narrowed her eyes. A gasp fled her lips and her innards tingled.
Her eyes stung. She pointed.

"There," she
whispered. "On the loom's crest. The gear."

At first she had not seen it. No
larger than a wagon wheel, it nearly drowned among a thousand other
moving pieces. But Koyee knew it was the right one; when she
squinted, she could see the stars and moons engraved upon its teeth.
She pulled out the page from her book and held it up. The illustrated
gear and the gear in the loom matched.

She stuffed the page back into
her pocket, passed through curtains of silk, and began walking toward
the pool and the loom beyond.

"Koyee, where you going?"
Nitomi demanded, whisking behind her and grabbing at her. "They'll
eat you."

"Nonsense. They only eat .
. ." She looked down at the poolside, saw human skeletons, and
grimaced. "Never mind. It's too late anyway. They saw us."

Before her, along the ring of
steel pillars, the weaveworm queens raised their heads. Their
gleaming black eyes stared at her, and their abdomens kept
contracting, birthing their spawn. Atop the pool, the flying
weaveworms—the winged workers who boiled the cocoons—paused from
their task, hovering and staring. As one, the animals—mothers and
workers alike—opened their maws, revealing sharp teeth, and
shrieked.

The sound rolled across the
mountain. The metal pillars shook. The larvae, both the ones crawling
away from their mothers and those already cocooned, whimpered and
wriggled.

Nitomi squeaked. Qato grunted
and drew his sword. Koyee raised her hands and called out, loud
enough for all the weaveworms to hear.

"Weaveworms, hear me! I am
Koyee Mai of Qaelin. I come in peace. I come offering friendship and
trade."

The shrieks continued. The
mountain itself seemed to shake. Only the great loom kept working
away—clicking, turning, and weaving its silk, hundreds of feet tall
and seeming as ancient as the mountain itself.

"You are a daughter of
men!" rose the cry of a hundred worms; they spoke in one voice.
"The children of man-flesh are forbidden to enter our realm. The
bones of those who walked here lie around you. Your bones will join
them."

Nitomi raised two daggers and
snarled. "You'll have to fight us first, and I have dozens of
daggers, and I trained in the Dojai School, and if you fight me,
you'll die, weaveworms, so don't even think that you can win, because
I—"

"Qato fight!" cried
her towering friend and sliced the air with his sword.

"No!" Koyee shouted.
"We will not fight."

The weaveworms flew closer,
wings ruffling her hair. Strands of saliva quivered in their maws.
Their stench assailed her, the smell of rotten fruit and old meat and
wet earth. One eager weaveworm, a festering thing twice Koyee's size,
lunged so close that it nearly hit her. Nitomi and Qato lashed their
blades, but Koyee shoved them back, and the weapons missed the worm.
The breath of the creature blasted her face, hot and fetid.

"Enough!" Koyee
shouted. "Weaveworm—back! We are no humble villagers you can
scare. We bear sharp blades and we're trained in war. Yet we come in
peace. Close your mouths and open your ears. We come here to trade
with you."

The weaveworm who hovered before
her, wings beating, gave a horrible sound like gagging. It took Koyee
a moment to realize it was laughing. A pattern of pale blue rings
circled its body, and glowing bulbs of light tipped its wings. Its
breath smelled like rotted flesh.

"You have nothing to trade
with us," said the weaveworm. "We trade with the Montai
folk, though we do not let them gaze upon us. We leave our silk upon
their beaches, and we collect the scraps we find." It gestured
at the loom behind it. "We have built a palace from the
treasures washed ashore. The children of men are wasteful. They
discard old metal, old pottery, old treasures they once loved. They
litter and pollute and break. But we are weaveworms. We are weavers,
loomers, fixers, collectors, builders, cleaners. We take the
discarded bits of man-folk, and we shape them into beauty, into a
tower of metal that pumps out glimmering silk like a spider pumps out
gossamer. What have you that the sea cannot give us? What have you
that we cannot find in the gutters of men? We care not for gold nor
gems, for they are trifles to us, pretty things that have no use. A
crude, ugly tool is worth more than a pretty, useless jewel. We care
not for small, glittering things, but for rusted iron and scrap
metal. Only for those would we sell our silk, and yet upon you, I see
only a few old blades, barely worth more than a strand."

"I seek not silk!"
Koyee called out, speaking both to the weaveworm fluttering before
her and to its brethren which covered the mountain. "I seek
metal too. I too am a builder—of less talent than weaveworms, but of
no less passion. I seek a gear." She pointed at the towering
loom. "I seek the gear from the crest of your loom."

The weaveworms stared at her for
a moment in silence, and then they all emitted their sickening,
bubbling laughter. Even the larvae seemed to gurgle in mockery,
imitating their elders.

"You seek the Cabera Gear."
They spoke as one, drool dripping, eyes shinning in amusement.
"Others have come before you—travelers in days long gone. For
thousands of years have children of men sought to steal our Cabera
Gear, but it is precious to us. It is the centerpiece of our loom,
the treasure of our tower. There is nothing you can trade for it. Now
leave or fight us, but bore us no longer with your words."

Koyee reached into her pockets,
pulled out coins, and held them out. "I have treasure. Here are
coins from the empress of Ilar. They are worth more than—"

"We have spoken!" said
the weaveworms. "The children of men never listen to words. For
long years we have warned them. We have spoken of their folly, of
their wastefulness, of the poison of their flotsam and jetsam. We
have cleaned the seas to build our home, and still they pollute,
still they do not hear. We care not for coins. We care for flesh."

They lunged toward her, mouths
open wide, spraying saliva. Their wings beat. At Koyee's side, Nitomi
screamed and tossed a dagger. The blade slammed into a weaveworm, and
the creature bucked and squealed. Qato swung his blade, slicing into
a wing. Teeth drove down toward Koyee, and she held out her shield,
blocking the attack.

"Wait!" she cried.
"Wait, weaveworms, and listen!"

They hissed around her, forming
a ring of flesh and tooth, some bleeding, most laughing, and their
tongues licked their teeth. "We have no use for words."

"I will not use words!"
she said . . . and sheathed her sword. Instead she drew her
flute—the old silver instrument she had played in The Green Geode as
a yezyana. "As payment, I will offer you no coins . . . but
music."

She brought the flute to her
lips, and Koyee played her song.

The notes flowed, the old song
called "Sailing Alone," the same song Little Maniko had
taught her on the streets of Pahmey long ago. At first her song was
soft, shaky, hesitant; she had not played in many turns and fear
filled her. But as the notes rose, quivering like beads of light upon
rain, the weaveworms ceased their onslaught and hovered, insects
caught in moonbeams, listening. Her dojai companions paused too,
tilted their heads, and lowered their blades.

Koyee closed her eyes, found her
inner light, and her song grew in strength. With her eyes closed, she
stood barefooted in Bluefeather Corner again, clad in only tattered
fur, an orphan girl of sixteen years, so hungry and cold, so afraid,
playing her song for coins. She stood upon the stage in The Green
Geode again, a yezyana in a dress of black silk, a roof over her head
and food in her belly but no less fear in her heart. She had played
this song then, and she played it now, and it was not just the song
Maniko had taught her, not just the song of a busker or a yezyana.
Here it became the song of her life, the song of a girl grown by the
dusk, a youth who sailed alone upon the Inaro, and a woman who fought
and bled for her empire. It was the song of Shenlai, the last dragon
of Qaelin whom she had guided into death. It was perhaps the song of
all the night, of all souls lost, of all souls sailing alone upon a
river, far from home. It was a song of darkness and of starlight.

When she opened her eyes, she
saw that the hive had fallen still and silent.

"Oh, Koyee," Nitomi
whispered, tears in her eyes. "It's beautiful."

The weaveworms regarded her. The
mothers clung to their perches, no longer birthing their babes, and
the workers had landed upon the rim of the bubbling pool. They stared
at Koyee, awe in their eyes.

"I will play you many
songs," Koyee said. "I will play you the songs of the night
and of the day beyond. I will play you songs of loneliness and hope,
of loss and joy. I will play you songs of moonlight on water, towers
that rise glowing into the sky, of war and peace, of fear and hope,
of distant cities of wonder and villages of solace. This will be my
payment to you—the gift of song and the gift of my heart."

The weaveworms blinked and
remained silent, as if too overcome with emotion to speak. Koyee
smiled softly, and a deep sadness and pride welled within her, for
she had sung to them the song of her soul, and she had moved them.

Finally their chief, the
weaveworm with the blue rings upon its back, whispered in a hoarse,
awed voice.

"It's beautiful."

Koyee bowed her head. "Thank
you. I did not compose this music, but I have made it my own, and—"

The weaveworm shook its head and
blasted out breath. "Not your music! Stupid thing. Never music!
We care not for such rackets of coarse sound."

Koyee gasped and took a step
back. She narrowed her eyes. "Coarse sound? But . . . I thought
the music awed you, that—"

"Stupid daughter of men!"
The weaveworm thrust its head near hers. Its eyes were the size of
her fists, black and bulging and blinking. Steam rose from its mouth,
and it licked its chops, dripping saliva. "The silver . . . the
silver of your flute! The most precious, forbidden of metals . . .
sweet silver . . ."