The Cloud Roads (5 page)

The whoosh of air warned him; Moon looked up to see Stone high in the air, drawing nearer to the tower. Moon just had time to stand and back away from the fire. Stone swooped in and dropped a carcass on the paving, a creature nearly as big as a kras, with thick oily skin and flippers instead of hooves.

Stone landed lightly on his feet, then shifted back to groundling. He waved toward the dead creature, still exasperated. “That’s what I’m planning to eat. You? From what I can see, you’re mostly skin and bones.”

He had a point there, but Moon demanded, “Then what do you want from me?”

Stone paced toward the fire, frowning down at it. The impatience was gone from his voice when he said, “I want you to come with me, back to my court.”

That... wasn’t what Moon was expecting. It took him a moment to realize he had heard Stone right. “What for?”

His gaze still on the fire, Stone said, “I’ve been looking for warriors to join us. Our last generation... didn’t produce enough. I’ve been at a colony to the east, the Star Aster Court. But I couldn’t talk any of them into coming back with me.” He glanced up, his face a little wry. “You’ve got somewhere else you want to go?”

Moon woke slowly, his body sluggish and his brain reluctant to face whatever was going to happen next. He couldn’t hear Ilane or Selis’ deep breathing, or the camp waking up around him. He was curled on his side, head pillowed on his arm, stiff and aching from lying on dirt-encrusted paving, but it was pleasantly warm. He rubbed his face and squinted up at the tent stretching over him—He went still, suddenly wide awake.
Not a tent.
It was a wing. Stone’s wing.
That’s right. Yesterday your friends tried to murder you.
The manacle was still around his wrist, the skin under it rubbed raw.

Moon rolled onto his back and stared up at Stone’s wing. With the morning light glowing through it, the dark, scaly membrane shone with a faint red tint. He hadn’t seen anybody else’s wings since his mother had been killed. This close he could see scars, old healed-over rents where the scales had been torn. The front edge of the wing still looked razor-sharp, but the skin folded over the joints was hard and gnarled where Moon’s was still smooth. Hopefully still smooth, if he could shift.

They had spent the night on top of the tower, not talking very much. Moon still had no idea how to reply to Stone’s offer, if Stone was even serious about it. Stone had stated that he was tired of arguing and they would talk about it in the morning when he hoped Moon would be less crazy. After some sleep, Moon was willing to admit that he had been a little hysterical, but it had been a hard day.

But it’s over. I hope.
Moon bit his lip and looked at his hands. The faint outline of scales wasn’t visible, at least in this light. He pressed a thumb to the skin of his forearm, forcing the blood away, but still couldn’t see anything.
All right. That’s good
. He knew why he was reluctant. If he tried and nothing happened... Putting it off wasn’t helping. He took a deep breath, and tried to shift.

He felt the change gather in his chest. There might have been a hesitation or it might have been his fear. Then he felt his bones lighten and his scales scrape against the paving, the weight of his folded wings, his tail. He curled up on himself for a moment, relief washing over him in a heady wave.

From the deep, steady breathing, Stone was still asleep, or doing a good imitation of it. Moon crawled to the edge of the big wing, then wriggled out from under it.

Once free, he stood and stretched, shaking out his spines and frills. The morning light was bright on the snow-capped mountains, the air chill and crisp. Nothing had disturbed the roof of the tower while they slept except a few brave carrion birds picking at the remnants of the riverbeast carcass.

The manacle was still on Moon’s wrist. He hooked his claws under the lock, wincing as the metal ground into his scales. He exerted careful pressure until the lock snapped and fell away.

Moon crossed the pavement and leapt to the battlement, digging his claws into the crumbling stone. He looked down at the dizzyingly steep drop to the rock below. Then he unfolded his wings and dove.

He flew up and down the gorge, stretching his wings, fighting the gusty wind and feeling the sun heat his scales. The exercise made him hungry.

He rode the air currents down to the river, which rushed over tumbled rocks in its shallow stretches, then turned calm where the channel was wide and deep. Moon plunged into water that would have been shockingly cold in his groundling form, and swam along the bottom. He found a slow-moving school of fish, each nearly three paces long with thick, heavy bodies and trailing iridescent fins. He snatched one and shot up into the air again.

There hadn’t been much point in seriously considering Stone’s offer when he hadn’t known whether the poison had ruined him permanently or not. Now... Moon found himself thinking about it. Long ago he had given up looking for his own people, assuming if there were any others, they were lost somewhere in the vastness of the Three Worlds, not to be found except by wild accident. Now the wild accident had actually happened.

But going with Stone meant trusting him. Moon would be putting himself in the middle of a large group of shifters, and while he might be a Raksura, he knew nothing about what they were like. If they turned out to be as murderous and violent as the Fell, he could find himself trapped and fighting for his life.

Another option was to look for another groundling settlement to join, which meant starting over again, with all new pitfalls and hazards. What he wanted most at the moment was to fly off alone to hunt and explore, with no other people to make him constantly wary. He was sick of growing to like and trust groundlings like the Cordans, and knowing it all meant nothing if they found out what he was.

But he was sick of being alone, too. He had done this all before, resolving to live alone only to become desperate for company, any company, after a few changes of the month.

He was on his fifth fish when he surfaced and saw he wasn’t alone. Stone, in groundling form, sat on a big flat rock by the bank. He leaned back, propped on his arms, face tipped up to the sun. Deliberate and unhurried, Moon slapped his fish against a rock to kill it, finished eating, then went back in the water to wash the guts off his scales. He surfaced again in the shallows, below where Stone sat, and used the sandy bottom to clean his claws.

Still sunning himself, Stone said, “You’re not supposed to do that, you know. Raksura don’t.”

“Raksura don’t bathe?” Moon said dryly, deliberately misunderstanding. He shook water out of his wings, spraying the bank. “That’s going to be a problem.”

Stone sat up to give him an ironic look. “Yes, we bathe. We don’t fish. Not like that.”

Moon climbed up onto the rock and sat to the side so he could keep his wings unfolded and let them dry. The sun was warm but the wind was still cold, and if he switched back to groundling form now, the water still on his scales would soak his clothes. “Why don’t you fish?”

“I don’t know. Probably never had a good place for it.” Stone squinted at him. “So. I’ve got one other court to visit before I head home. Are you coming with me?”

Moon looked across the river. Small swimming lizards stretched out on the rocks across the bank, waiting for them to leave so they could go after the remains of Moon’s fish. “If you were looking for Raksura, why did you come to the valley?”

Stone didn’t seem disconcerted by the question. “It was on my way back. I stopped to rest, caught a scent of something that turned out to be you. It was faint because you were in groundling form.” He shrugged. “Thought I’d stay on a few days to look around, see if there was a small colony there that I hadn’t heard about.”

Moon hadn’t been able to scent Stone. But that might just mean that Stone’s senses, like his shifted form, were stronger and more powerful.And it was beyond strange, talking to someone while Moon was in his other form; he had forgotten how different his own voice sounded, deeper and more raspy. He liked not having to hide.

He let his breath out, frustrated. Agreeing to go with Stone wasn’t a commitment to stay in his colony. If Moon let this chance go by, he knew he would regret it. He said, “I’ll come with you.”

Moon couldn’t tell if Stone was relieved. Stone just nodded, and said, “Good.”

Chapter Three

I
t turned out that, despite appearances, Stone was in a hurry. The other colony he wanted to visit was to the west, which he said was on the way back to the Indigo Cloud Court. He and Moon flew down the river gorge, riding the strong wind that flowed above it, then turned to cross the mountains. They passed more ruined towers standing on the rocky cliffs like sentinels, but no inhabited settlements.

Moon suspected that Stone could have easily made twice the distance, but he seemed content to glide along at Moon’s fastest pace. Moon was just glad Stone didn’t press to go faster; he was used to spending most of the day as a groundling, and it had been more than half a turn since he had stayed in his other form so long, or flown this far at one time. By afternoon, his back ached as if he had been hauling rocks all day. At least it distracted him from thinking about the Cordans. Every thought of Ilane was like poking an open wound, but he hoped Selis was all right, that she had found a home or at least someone to live with whom she could tolerate.

As the sun set, they finally stopped to rest in a ridge where the rock formed a sheltered hollow. Heavily overhung by trees on the rise above, it looked down on the terraced steps of the forest below. Moon climbed in, shifted back to groundling, and collapsed in an exhausted heap.

Stone landed on the ledge, shifted, ducked inside, and dropped his pack. He stretched, not looking any more fatigued than he had this morning. “It’s a little chilly in here.”

Moon snorted. “A little.” The hollow was screened from the wind bending the tops of the spiny trees, but the sun had never penetrated back here, and the rock radiated cold like a block of ice. It was also small. “There’s not much room for a fire.” Not that he was eager to get up and look for a better spot.

Stone sat on his heels to rummage through his pack. “We’re not staying that long. I want to get moving again soon.”

Moon growled under his breath but didn’t argue; if Stone wanted to test him, fine. And he didn’t want to stay in these mountains any longer than they had to, either. He curled up into a huddle, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. To distract himself, and to try to get some understanding of Stone’s route, he asked, “Why didn’t you stop at the other colony on the way east?”

“Sky Copper has always been small. I knew they weren’t likely to have any spare warriors. I need to talk to them about something else.” Stone found a ratty, dark colored bundle in his pack that Moon had assumed was just cushioning for the kettle. Apparently it was a blanket. “And the mentors said the best chance was to go to Star Aster.” His expression turned preoccupied. “Or toward Star Aster. Maybe they said ‘toward.’”

Moon put that together with Stone’s earlier comment, that it took special talent to be a mentor. “The mentors are shamen?” He had often had bad luck with shamen. They were either worthless or immediately suspicious of him.

“Augurs, mostly, and healers,” Stone corrected, still preoccupied as he spread out the blanket. He lay down and shoved his pack into place as a pillow. “Come on, get some rest.” He patted the other half of the blanket, offering it to Moon.

Moon didn’t move. He still found Stone nearly impossible to read. Not that he had been able to read Ilane, either. “I’m not sleeping with you.” If this was going to be a problem, he wanted to find out now, before he spent any more long, miserable days fighting headwinds.

Stone lifted a brow, deeply amused. “I have great-grandchildren older than you.” He pointed to a white seam on his elbow. “You see this scar? That’s older than you.”

Moon’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, but he wondered if that was true. He hadn’t been keeping close track, but he knew roughly that it had been around thirty-five turns of the seasonal cycle since his family had been killed. That made him old for some groundling races and young for others. If Stone was really that old, and Moon was really the same species...
If this doesn’t work out, you’re going to be spending a lot of time alone.

He edged over and eased down next to Stone. The blanket looked shabby but it was thick and well made; it didn’t soften the rock but it kept the cold at bay. Rolling on his side, facing away from Moon, Stone said, “I’ll try not to molest you in my sleep.”

“Bastard,” Moon muttered. He would have retreated to the other end of the cleft in a huff, but Stone seemed to put out almost as much body heat as a groundling as he did in his other form. Still annoyed, Moon fell asleep.

It was deep into the night and Moon was curled against Stone’s back, when Stone thumped him with an elbow and said it was time to go.

The mountains stretched on and on, but even when the clouds gathered and they flew through cold mist that was like breathing wet wool, there was no question of getting lost. Moon had always known which way due south was, could feel it as if it pulled at his bones. From the way Stone confidently soared through the thick clouds, never veering from their course, Moon thought he must have a similar ability.

For the next few days, they flew by day and by night, stopping only briefly to sleep and hunt the sparse game. Moon had seen several different breeds of mountain grasseaters but they were all boney and lean, and didn’t make for satisfying meals. Though the long flights were exhausting, Moon quickly gained stamina. But the part of the day he looked forward to the most was before they slept, when Stone asked him questions about where he had lived, how far he had traveled, what he had seen. With more tact than Moon would have given him credit for, he didn’t mention the Cordans.

It was strange to talk about the places Moon had been without having to carefully avoid anything that had to do with flying or shifting. In return, Stone talked about flying over the sea realms, seeing the shapes of white coral towers just below the waves, the flickering tails of merrow-people and waterlings as they fled his shadow. It was dangerous to go out over the seas, with nowhere to land if you ran into a storm or grew too tired to go on; it was even more risky to swim in the deeps, where creatures far larger than the biggest land predators lived. Moon had never ventured much past the coastal islands to the south, and found it fascinating to hear what lay further out.

By twilight on the fifth day, they came to the fringes of the mountains, where the sharp peaks tumbled gradually down into green hills and rocky outcrops were cut through with narrow, rushing streams. This time Stone picked out a grassy ledge wide enough for a fire, though it was warmer down here than on the upper slopes. Moon suspected he just wanted to make tea. When Moon brought back a bundle of deadfall collected from the brush in the ravines, he found Stone shifted to groundling, with a big, woolly grasseater carcass steaming in the cool air and a rock hearth already built.

After they ate, Moon stretched out on his stomach, basking in the warm firelight, the cool turf soft against his groundling skin, comfortably full of grasseater and tea. From somewhere distant, he heard a roar, edged like a bell and so far away it almost blended with the wind. He slanted a look at Stone to see if they had to worry.

“Skylings, mountain wind-walkers.” Stone sat by the fire, breaking sticks up into small pieces and absently tossing them into the flames. “They live too far up in the air to notice us.”

Moon rolled onto his side to squint suspiciously up at the sky. The stars were bright, streaked with clouds. “Then what do they eat?”

“Other skylings, tiny ones, no bigger than gnats. They make swarms big enough to mistake for clouds.” As Moon tried to picture that, Stone asked, “Did you ever look for other shifters?”

Stone hadn’t asked about this before, and Moon wanted to avoid the subject. Looking for his own people had led him into more trouble than anything else. “For awhile. Then I stopped.” He shrugged, as if it was nothing. “I couldn’t search the whole Three Worlds.”

“And the warrior you were with didn’t tell you which court, or the name of the queen, or anyone in your line?” Stone sounded distinctly irritated. “She didn’t even give you a hint?”

Moon corrected him pointedly, “No, my mother didn’t tell me anything.”

Stone sighed, poking at the fire. Moon got ready for an argument, but instead Stone asked, “How did she and the Arbora die?”

That wasn’t a welcome subject either. It was like an old wound that had never quite stopped bleeding. Moon didn’t want to talk about the details, but he owed Stone some kind of an answer. He propped his chin on his arms and looked out into the dark. “Tath killed them.”

Tath were reptilian groundlings, predators, and they had surrounded the tree Moon’s family had been sleeping in. He remembered waking, confused and terrified, as his mother tossed him out of the nest. He had realized later that she had picked him because he was the only other one who could fly, the only one who had a chance to escape while she stayed to defend the others.

He had been too young to fly well, and had crashed down through the branches, tumbling nearly to the ground, within reach of the Tath waiting below. One had snatched at him and Moon had clawed its eyes, struggling away. He had half-flown, half-climbed through the trees back up to the nest. But his mother and the others were all dead, torn to pieces.

If he had realized how hard living without them would be, he would have let the Tath catch him. He just said, “It happened... fast.”

They were both silent for a time, listening to the fire crackle. Moon had the feeling that Stone was as uncomfortable offering sympathy as Moon was reluctant to accept it. He wasn’t surprised when Stone tossed a last stick into the fire, dusted his hands, and veered off the subject completely. “Do you know why it’s called the Three Worlds?”

Moon relaxed again, settling down into the turf, relieved to be on safer ground. “Three continents.” It was a wild guess. Moon had never seen a map big enough to show more than the immediate area.

“Three realms: sea, earth, and sky. Everyone remembers the sea realms, but they’ve forgotten the sky realms. It’s been so many generations since the island peoples fought among themselves. They’re mostly gone now, with no one left to tell the stories.”

Moon wondered if he had been right about the sky-islands all along. “Is that where we’re from?”

His gaze distant, Stone said, “No. We’ve always come from the earth.”

At dawn they flew out across the grassland, where old pillars stuck up out of the ground, part of an ancient scattered roadway or aqueduct. So many peoples had come and gone from the Three Worlds that it was littered with their remnants.

By afternoon they found an intact road, cutting through the ocean of tall green grass, more than a hundred paces wide and built of the same white stone as the broken pillars. As the day darkened toward evening, they spotted a groundling caravan traveling upon it.

The caravan included box wagons, heavily carved of dark wood, pulled by large, shaggy draughtbeasts with substantial horns. It had stopped and was preparing to camp for the night, with the groundlings unharnessing the beasts, putting up tents, building cook fires.

Moon and Stone flew high enough that the groundlings hadn’t noticed them. They both blended in with the twilight sky, but Moon banked to give the camp wide berth anyway. He doubted the caravan had weapons that could do any damage at this distance, but there was no point in frightening them. Then he saw Stone circling down, heading for a landing in the tall grass some distance from the edge of the road.
Is he out of his mind?
he thought, startled.

Stone dropped into a low spot at an angle to the road, so swift and silent the groundlings probably hadn’t seen him.

Moon went down as fast as he could, alighting in the flattened grass that marked Stone’s landing site. Stone had already shifted to groundling and stretched extravagantly, rolling his shoulders. The grass around them was as tall as a small tree, standing well above their heads. Moon shifted, demanding, “What are you doing?”

Stone gave him a pointed look, as if the answer was obvious. “I want the news. They’re Sericans, probably coming from Kish.”

“What, you’re just going to walk up to them?” Moon had trouble believing he was serious.

Stone lifted a brow. “I could stand on the roadside and try to signal, but—”

Moon shook his head incredulously. “They’re going to know what we are. How many groundlings do you see wandering around out here?”

“Maybe fifty or sixty, judging by the wagons.” Stone shouldered his pack and explained patiently, “These people travel long distances, and they see a lot of strange things. Some of them will suspect we’re different. As long as they don’t feel threatened, they won’t act on it.”

It still sounded crazy. Moon had approached groundlings like this before, but only after making certain he didn’t look like anything but another traveler, even if it meant landing a day’s walk or more away. “What if you’re wrong?”

Stone started away through the grass. “I’ve been wrong before,” he admitted, not helpfully.

Moon reluctantly trailed him to the edge of the road. It was built up more than ten paces high, more of a causeway through the grassland, something that hadn’t been apparent from the air. Crumbling sets of steps had been built at intervals, half-buried in the grass; whatever they led to was long vanished. Stone climbed the nearest and started across toward the camp. Still expecting disaster, Moon crouched uneasily at the edge of the road.

The wagons were arranged in a half-circle, and the camp smelled of wood smoke, incense, and onion roots frying in nut oil. The groundlings had blue skin, a much darker blue than Kavath’s, and their hair was black. They wore bright colors, long coats and pantaloons of red or blue or dark green, embroidered and trimmed with gold or black braid. They had spears, and short bows that looked as if they were made of horn. The furry draughtbeasts shook their hides and lowed as Stone approached.

Several men came out to greet him, warily at first, but they seemed to grow easier as he spoke to them. The wind carried their voices away but Moon could hear fragments. The head drover, speaking Altanic, asked if they were from Kaupi or Loros, and Stone replied only that they were travelers, heading west. Finally they took Stone into the camp to sit by the fire with an older man who was probably their leader. Moon saw the man’s sharp eyes glance his way, and heard him say, “The young one is skittish?”