A voice above them said, “Moon? Chime?” It was Strike again, hanging one-handed from the edge of the balcony above. “Flower wants you to come see something. I’m supposed to go get the queens and Stone.” That didn’t sound good. “What is it?” Moon asked, pushing to his feet.
Strike waved his free hand. “Nobody knows—that’s the problem!”
Before hurrying up to the greeting hall, Strike pointed them back to the passage that led in toward the center of the trunk, and they found the way by following the trail of lit shells.
Flower and Knell stood in a junction of two passages, and at first Moon thought the dark, irregular blot on the wall was a shadow. But as they drew closer he saw it was something smudged on the wood itself. It stretched all the way up to the curving ceiling, and down to the smooth floor. The scent was like rot, like wood left in water until it softened and fell apart.
“What is it?” Chime demanded, and stepped close to peer at it. “A fungus?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Knell said, giving him a thoughtful glance. “The hunters saw it last night, when they came through here to make certain there was no danger, but they thought it was just moss. Today I saw there were spots of it all down these inner passages.”
Flower had made a small stone glow with light, and held it close to the dark splotch, studying it intently. “Moon, have you ever heard groundlings speak of anything like this? A blight that kills trees?”
“Kills trees?” Moon stepped forward, startled. He had thought this was a curiosity, not a threat. “This tree?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Flower beckoned him closer. “Look. This isn’t a growth on the wood, it’s the wood itself.”
Moon leaned close. She was right. The dark spongy substance still showed the grain. He touched it, pushing gently, and his claw sunk through. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” The Hassi had had a problem with fungus in their orchards on top of the link-trees, but it had been a mushroom-like growth that made the fruit turn sour, nothing like this.
Chime stepped down the wall, and picked cautiously at the damaged wood. It flaked away under his touch. “It doesn’t look like blight. It looks like the wood is just dying, for no reason.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” Flower stepped back, her face etched with worry. “Because that’s what it looks like to me, too.”
Knell grimaced and shook his head in denial. “But this tree must be hundreds and hundreds of turns old. How can…”
Moon wasn’t sure how Knell meant to finish that sentence. Maybe How can our luck be this bad? that Indigo Cloud had come back to this place just as the ancient tree was finally failing.
He heard movement behind him and caught Jade’s distinctive scent, then Stone’s. He glanced up just as Stone came around the curve of the passage.
Stone’s reaction answered one question. Moon had just had time to form a slight suspicion that Stone might have known about this when he had brought the court here, that he had meant this to be only a temporary resting place, not a permanent home, and he just hadn’t bothered to inform anyone of his plans. But Stone was in groundling form, and as he stopped in the passage, his expression of shock was easy to read. Moon found himself wishing his suspicion had been right. At least then there might have been a plan for what to do next.
Stone put one hand on the wall. “This is heartwood.”
Jade stepped past him, and worriedly looked up at the blight spread across the curve of the ceiling. “What’s heartwood?”
He grimaced. “It’s the core of the tree. It can’t die, because it doesn’t grow, it doesn’t change.”
“Then what is this?” Flower pointed to the blight.
Stone abruptly turned away, back up the passage. There was a startled moment of hesitation, then they all scrambled to follow.
They passed Pearl and River out in the stairwell and Knell skittered to a halt to explain. Stone tore past out into the big hall with the Arbora workrooms. He jumped down into the well, shifted into his winged form in mid-air, then caught the lip of a gallery and climbed rapidly straight down the wall. Moon leapt after him, the others following.
He thought Stone was going all the way down to the roots, so was caught unprepared when Stone suddenly whipped over a balcony three