Edge of Worlds (The Books of the Raksura) by Martha Wells Page A

stones in the hearth bowl for tea.
    Moon took his usual place next to Jade, across from Pearl. Other places were taken by Stone, Balm, Chime, and Heart, as well as Pearl’s warrior Floret. For the past turn, Pearl had been giving Floret increasing responsibility among the warriors, which was a good thing as far as Moon was concerned. Though she was one of Pearl’s favorites, Floret had always been able to get along with Jade’s faction. Her increasing authority in the court seemed to be a sign from Pearl that there would be no more toleration of fighting between the two warrior factions.
    Pearl had thrown out everyone else who had tried to subtly slide in.
    Delin sat on a cushion with a cup of tea, looking around in appreciation at the carved Aeriat stretching up the walls. Pearl made a gesture with her claws. “So, tell us what this unwelcome visitation is all about.”
    Fortunately Delin had met Pearl before, and was also fairly impervious to attempts to insult him when he was focused on a goal. He leaned forward. “I was visiting in the city of Kedmar in Kish-Jandera, when I was sent a message that a group of scholars wished to speak of long-dead cities. Naturally, I was intrigued.”
    Stone said, “How did they know you knew anything about dead cities?”
    Moon was wondering that as well. As far as he knew, Delin’s scholarship involved mostly other races of the Three Worlds.
    “Yes,” Jade added more pointedly, “Who have you been talking to?”
    Delin said, “I took what you all had told me of the forerunner city on the northwest coast and the imprisoned being you found there and put it into a monograph, which had been copied and sent to the Scholars’ Colloquium in Kish-Jandera, among other places.”
    There was a moment of startled and probably appalled silence. Moon knew he felt pretty appalled. He said, just to clarify, “Including the part that the species we call the forerunners is where the Raksura and the Fell came from.”
    Delin nodded. “That was one of the truly interesting parts. Scholars know of many vanished species, but there are many more, of much greater age, we know little to nothing of.”
    Moon exchanged a look with Jade. He had known Delin was a scholar, but somehow hadn’t imagined him as being in contact with other scholars who weren’t from the Golden Isles. Now that he thought about it, it had been a naive assumption.
    Pearl’s tail lashed slowly. Stone rubbed his eyes and said, “Was that really a good idea?”
    Delin spread his hands. “It is what I do. What I did not do was speak of the young Raksura called Shade, of either his ancestry or how he was needed to open the creature’s prison. That knowledge was far too dangerous to share.”
    That was a relief. Moon could almost hear tense muscles relax all around him. Only the right combination of Fell and Raksura could recreate a being close enough to a forerunner to easily open a passage into the hidden, abandoned city. Shade, Moon’s half clutch-brother, rescued from the Fell as a fledgling, had been that right combination. Pearl and Jade settled their spines. “Good,” Stone muttered. “That’s something, anyway.”
    “My monograph did not include any illustrations.” Delin reached into his shirt and retrieved a pouch that hung on a string around his neck. He opened it and drew out a folded square of thick paper. “Which was why this captured my attention.”
    He spread it on the floor and everyone leaned forward to look. It was a drawing of a block or a tile, with a figure carved into it. It looked like an Aeriat Raksura, but there were too many spines, and instead of a mane of spines and frills, there was a solid crest atop its head. A Fell ruler’s crest. Floret, startled, said, “But that’s Shade.”
    “No. This object was carved ages before that young consort was born. It came from a wall decoration below the city the Kishan have found. They cut it from the wall and took it away, and I have seen it and