rags was peering around Stone, staring at Moon. Its eyes were big, dark, and slightly mad. It smelled like a groundling; based on the size, Moon was guessing one of the gray ones with the waterling scales and crest.
“This is Dari.” Stone jerked his head to indicate his new groundling friend. “They threw him out of that wine bar up there.”
“Halloo,” Dari said, or something similar. Moon realized that Dari wasn’t mad, but just very, very intoxicated.
A group of blue groundlings tumbled out of the wine bar’s doorway, the vapor-light gleaming off their pearly skullcaps. They careened down the steps, talking loudly. Moon leaned his aching head back against the wall. “The crewmen were speaking Kedaic. They used a word I thought meant ‘magnate,’ but maybe it means ‘magister.’” That would explain how the thieves had found the colony tree, why they had been so bent on getting the seed. If Ardan was a powerful groundling shaman, he could have wanted the seed for magic, used his powers to locate it, and sent the thieves after it. Moon just hoped Ardan hadn’t noticed that something had flown into his damn magical barrier.
Stone said, dryly, “That would agree with Dari, who says a powerful magic-worker lives in that tower, and that everyone’s afraid of him.” Dari nodded emphatically.
Stone added, “I checked. That barrier goes all the way down to the pavement in front of the doors.”
The drunken groundlings staggered across the plaza. Two spotted Moon and Stone, and broke off to rush aggressively toward them. Dari yelped and cowered.
When they were less than ten paces away, Stone growled, a low reverberation that Moon felt through the paving. The two groundlings stumbled to an abrupt halt and peered uncertainly. Groundling eyes often weren’t as good in the dark as Raksuran, and they probably couldn’t see much except three shapes sitting against the wall. They hesitated, wavering, then retreated, throwing uneasy looks back. They rejoined the rest of the group, which was making its way loudly and erratically across the plaza.
Dari made a noise of relief, pulled a pottery jug out of his rags, and drank deeply.
Stone waited until the groundlings had wandered out of sight, before he said, “He’s had our seed most of a turn, depending on how long it took his thieves to get back through the forest. We need to get in there.”
“But not tonight.” Moon had had enough for now. They needed to rest, get more information about Ardan, then think of a way to get past the protective barrier. “Dari, show us where the nearest abandoned house is.”
There were several not far away, a crowded huddle of houses around a dark octagonal tower. Dari pointed it out for them, then wandered off back toward the wine bar.
They made their way down a little alley that wove between the other buildings. It opened occasionally into small courtyards, barely thirty paces across. Moon could hear people sleeping in some of the houses, but others sounded empty. The odor of mold was worse here, almost as bad as the musky stench of the monster. The rock everything was built from seemed too strong to crumble, but the perpetual damp caused mold and mushroom-like plants to grow on it.
They came to the tower’s base, and there was no mistaking the fact that it was abandoned; the entrance archway was bricked up.
Moon glanced around, making sure the houses overlooking this plaza had either blocked windows or blank walls. Then he shifted and jumped up onto the side of the tower.
The openings below the third floor had all been blocked up, the seams filled with layers of dirt and mold. He climbed up to the first open window. Stone flowed past him and disappeared into an opening on an upper floor. Moon slipped inside, scenting nothing but rot.
The room was large and high-ceilinged, the floor strewn with broken furniture mixed with shrouds of disintegrating fabric and rotted trash. It was too dark to make out the carving on the pillars and the walls. Moon explored, finding that the layout was fairly simple, with big rooms on each floor around a central staircase. Prowling around each level to make certain nothing else was living here, he kept stepping on odd indentations in the floor. They were small and round, and there were a lot of them. He wasn’t sure what they were for, except to trip the unwary, until he found the rusted broken remnants of a metal clip in one. Huh, he thought,