The Scarab Path

Across the mirror of the Exalsee, the glitter and dance of an aerial duel was takng place. Che leant on the rail, fascinated. She could just make out the combatants. The match was something peculiar to this region, uniquely uneven: a dragonfly-rider from Princep Exilla was flying against a mechanical orthopter. The insect was vastly nimbler in the air, hovering and darting in circles about the machine. Its rider had only a bow and throwing spears. Barring the luckiest shot, he would merely waste his arrows. If the orthopter's rotating piercers found their prey then it would be over in a moment but the machine, sleek and deadly as it was, seemed to lumber through the air. Eventually it would run short of fuel and the pilot would have to break off from the contest. The Dragonfly would count that as a win.

Trallo joined her, stretching theatrically. Their current transport was a more utilitarian beast than Captain Parrols's piece of luxury. The Fighting Craidhen ran passengers and light cargo in short, quick hops around the Exalsee. Aside from the impressive engines, which stank of a mineral oil that made Che feel queasy, there was no spare weight or needless decoration in the airship's design.

'Here.' Trallo handed her a spyglass. She took it, abruptly glum, and even looked into it. She saw only blurs and smudges wheeling and dancing at the lens's far end. It made her think of Trallo's little people.

'Your kinden …' It was an awkward thing to ask. 'Some of you are Inapt, yes?' She already knew it was so. She had even seen Fly seers in Tharn.

'Hardly,' Trallo said, nevertheless. 'What use would they be?'

In Solarno things are different. Still, she stared at him until he shrugged.

'Oh a few,' he admitted. 'A few are born each generation. Less and less, I'd guess. They have a blasted hard time of it, I'd guess.'

'Quite.' She handed back the spyglass to him.

The Fighting Craidhen flew on through the night, and the academics were given nothing but some blankets thrown over the bare boards of the hold on which to sleep. Che made it plain she had no time for their complaints. She had not explained to them why they had left Solarno so precipitately. When Praeda questioned the wisdom of hiring Trallo, she had likewise not been drawn into debate. To her astonishment, her fiat on such matters was grudgingly accepted. They all think I know what I'm doing! She could have laughed. I'm making it up as I go along. She knew that Stenwold would have done better.

Trallo came to shake her by the shoulder, a very little after dawn. She twitched awake suddenly, reaching instinctively across the hard floor for a slight man who was not there. For a moment she felt disoriented. Surely Achaeos had been kneeling beside her only now. Where was she, and where had he gone?

The avalanche of a year's history brought her back, trading happy fantasy for hard fact. 'Oh,' she said. 'Oh, yes. What is it?'

The Fly-kinden tugged his beard, which she recognized by now as a sign of good humour. Leaving the academics to bicker, and the Vekken to their stony silence, she had been spending most of her time with the caravan master. His cheerful talk reminded her of Taki. There was an open flamboyance to these Solarnese Fly- kinden that their Lowlands brethren lacked.

'You should see this from the air,' he said. 'We're coming up on the place now.'

Blearily she stumbled up on deck. Dawn had done little to shift the night's gloom, but she could see that beneath them the water was giving way to solid ground. Trallo had reached the bow rail with a flicker of his wings, while she trod heavily after him.

'What am I looking for?' she asked him. After a pause, she changed that to, 'What am I looking at?'

It was a mountain, only it was too narrow, altogether too smooth. She could see the cluster of buildings at its base: a walled enclosure of huts and houses built in its shadow. It cut into the sky like a knife blade, looming bigger and bigger as the Craidhen neared it.

Che shook her head. 'I give up,' she said. 'What?'

Trallo was grinning. 'There's a fellow I once met who went deep into the Forest Aleth — that's all the green stuff south of the Exalsee. He went real deep, said that these things were all over there, just rising up from the canopy, big as you like, with some kind of albino Ant-kinden just building them up from the ground. Anyway, that's one of them. Been abandoned for a long time by whoever did make it, but it's like a castle. There's rooms and passages and all sorts inside, and even more underground. A tribe of the Alethi live there now, won't let much anyone in. I hear they're only using a tiny portion of it, though.'

More light struck the vast dagger of earth and stone, turning it the colour of honey. It was a hundred feet high, perhaps more, for the scale of the buildings in its shadow was hard to guess. Che had a strange feeling in her stomach at the sight which, after some hesitation, she identified as excitement.

Ostrander was but the door to greater mysteries. We are leaving behind the things that we know.

Seven

They ran into trouble at Ostrander. It caught them unawares, having come so far without.

Trallo had found them lodgings in one of the shacks within Ostrander's wooden walls, and was now busy making arrangements for the trek onwards to Porta Rabi. The Vekken ambassadors would not venture out, because Ostrander was a hostile Ant city-state as far as they were concerned, even though the Ants of the Exalsee seemed to behave differently to their Lowlander cousins. (But doesn't everything, here? was Che's thought on that.) Che herself shadowed Trallo, because he was always good company and because his companionship was teaching her something of his trade. The academics she left to their own devices, which would also prove to be a learning experience.

Trallo had spent the day haggling with a succession of merchants over pack animals and automotives, and had concluded his dealings with each by angrily springing up and declaring that he would never do business with such a villain ever again. They would then meet the next day and renegotiate. It was a way of trading that exactly suited both the hot-blooded Solarnese and the proud Dragonflies of Princep Exilla, and the trading crowd in Ostrander was made up of both. There were a few Spider-kinden as well, and a miscellany of renegades and halfbreeds from Chasme. The actual locals took no part in Ostrander's role as a caravan stop, save by tolerating the rabble of newcomers' buildings in the shadow of their artificial mountain.

Che spotted the natives around, although fewer than she had expected. They were Ant-kinden of an unhealthy shade, greenish-white and anaemic-looking. The vast majority of them did not venture beyond the caverns of their pirated home, and they only came out to tax those who sought shelter in their shadow. They carried spears and crossbows and wore a mismatch of armour, from clattering vests of chitin shards to Solarnese plated leathers and full chainmail. Che already knew that most of the Ant-kinden of the Exalsee lived nomadic lives in the Forest Aleth and were reckoned a primitive lot, by the Solarnese at least. The Ostranden, however, had broken from that lifestyle, settled down in their inherited fortress and acquired civilized vices. In fact they were starting to become a mirror of the fiercely territorial Lowlander city-states that Che knew all too well.

With evening coming on, Che and Trallo found themselves sitting discussing alliances with a Spider-kinden woman and a Solarnese man. Travellers did not set off singly down the road to Porta Rabi, for the desert fringe held too many dangers to be travelled alone. The Solarnese was a rug-trader, the Spider was a slaver, and Trallo had brought them together and, as a reward for the introduction, earned a place in their company. Che had the vague impression they would be paying him for the privilege as well but, as they only made veiled allusions to money, she could not be sure.

Manny burst in just as they were concluding their business, thundering through the door and almost falling at Che's feet. The Solarnese and the Spider had drawn blades on the instant, and Che found her own shortsword in her hand by some instinct she had not known she still owned. The fat man was running with sweat, his fine clothes ripped down the back.

'Hammer and tongs!' Che swore at him. 'What's wrong with you?'

Manny shook his head so hard that his jowls quivered. 'Not me,' he got out, 'the others … Soldiers come to the lodgings … trying to arrest everyone-'

Trallo was out of the door at once, wings a blur. Che ran after him, trying to resheathe her sword as she