The air warmed quickly once the sun was up; the ornithians started out slower and more sleepy than usual, but once they were moving they woke up and were eager to explore more of the world at the fastest pace we’d allow.

  We paused for lunch a bit early to take advantage of ft ground. It wasn’t big enough to camp, but it did have enough space to get the wagon off the road.

  “Didn’t you say there’s water here?” Terenei asked Zanshe.

  She nodded. “Well, not right here. It’s in a little deeper, and a bit of a nuisance to reach, but not especially dangerous.”

  “More bucket hauling,” Terenei said, rolling his eyes.

  Zanshe chuckled. “I’ll do it.”

  “Why is it a nuisance to reach?” Heket asked. “Between us all, it might be possible for it to be easier.”

  “It’s practically impossible not to get spshed.”

  “Aquians are cold-tolerant,” Terenei pointed out. “And don’t find being spshed unpleasant.”

  From a human perspective, being in a form that was wearing nothing except a wrapped sarong and some jewellery didn’t have much appeal, but then, I already knew my perspective could shift with my form. “Sure. I can dry off fast.”

  “That might work,” Zanshe said thoughtfully, collecting both buckets. “Well, let’s see if it’s easier, with you getting the water and me carrying it, hm?”

  A gap in the rock cliff took us into a twisting crevice, wide enough that I could probably have gotten through in my centaur form but only with considerable care. I doubted we could get the ornithians through without some lost feathers. Zanshe occasionally turned sideways for a step or two, to get past narrower parts. It branched occasionally, enough so that I began to worry about getting lost.

  “Don’t worry,” Zanshe said. “I know the way. Some of these paths loop around and they’re disorienting, you can go in circles without realizing it. Two of them end at a deep chasm, in one case quite abruptly around a blind corner so it would be frighteningly easy to fall. One leads to an earthke.”

  “That’s when the ground is so soft and loose you can sink in it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t there something that lives in them? The silk things, what were they... lindwurms?”

  “Young lindwurms like earthkes.”

  “Right. Where do old lindwurms live?”

  “They migrate towards the Wurmheights.”

  “What do they eat? There can’t be much food.”

  “Small ones come to the surface to absorb sunlight on clear days and otherwise live on the mineralised water at the bottom of earthkes and the insects that also burrow in earthkes. They’ll snatch surface bees and butterflies and moths if they can. An engineer team and a couple of biologists created a sort of gss-and-metal bubble that can be lowered down into an earthke to allow observation. They published a fascinating book.”

  “It sounds it. What about big ones?”

  “No one is entirely certain. There have been cims of seeing things in deep water that look much like rge lindwurms. The great wurms of the Wurmheights, by all reports, have enough simirities that they appear to be the same species with small changes that might be age and environment. The ones in the Wurmheights are extremely aggressive and there’s no way to study them properly.”

  “Oh, they sound fun.”

  “The Wurmheights were discovered quite a long time ago. There are said to be unique rewards in there, and there are stories of people finding amazing things, but getting that far is difficult. Reports are that the terrain becomes more brutal the farther you go and the great wurms are only the biggest living danger. Nothing wanders out, for which we’re all grateful, and the only people who go in are the extremely restless who want a challenge.”

  “Sounds like that’s where those two belong.”

  Zanshe chuckled. “Lovely idea. It’s a shame they’d never stay there. Turn right and watch your step, there’s a steep slope down and it swings to the left rather sharply.”

  This would, apparently, be the part of the game where you get to wander around in a booby-trapped maze of identical corridors and blind corners, hoping to survive long enough to find the goal, then find the way out.

  “Fun pce,” I said.

  “Yes, I know. It’s not an entirely safe pce, but it’s a bit boring, really. Pnts don’t grow in here, it’s too narrow for much sun. Even the birds tend to just fly over and not come down, since there’s nothing for them. I’ve seen goats jump over the top. The rock has no particur features of any interest. If it weren’t for the water, there’d be no point to coming into this at all.”

  Finally, on one side, it opened into a dead-end pocket. Zanshe would have to duck to get into it, although that was all; the bottom of it was steeply sloped, and I could hear water running.

  “Oh, I got this,” I said, and gestured my dispy into sight so I could switch to aquian.

  The air wasn’t actually all that cold against my bare skin.

  “I think,” Zanshe mused, “once the novelty wore off of being able to choose which species at any time, I might find it a bit overwhelming, having to choose at all times.”

  “It’s useful to me, since it’s letting me catch up in a world where I have no skills and no experience, but yes, it definitely can be. It’s not that I’m not grateful to have the option to just pick one and settle down somewhere, but how do I stick with just one when situations are going to come up that make another one more useful? And it’s not even that simple. But for right now, we can get water without anyone else getting wet.”

  I stepped inside to look around. It was dark enough to limit what I could see, but light did trickle in through a hole in the ceiling. Not that I really needed light, since the air itself against my skin could tell me where the walls and openings were.

  The other thing trickling through that hole, though only on one side, was a narrow stream of water. It fell with some force into the pool below it, which took up the entire floor of the pocket, although it was so shallow around the edges that it didn’t even cover my bare toes.

  “This is kind of cool, really. Buckets?”

  Zanshe handed them to me. “This is likely to take more than one each.”

  “I’ve seen them drink. How about I just stay here and you can come back for more?” I waded into the pool, out to where it was deep enough to fill the buckets properly, which put me solidly in reach of the falling water’s spshing. “That way I won’t be out in the wind with wet skin, and I won’t have to keep swapping back and forth using magic.”

  She accepted the full buckets. “I’ll be back soon, I’m sure.”

  “Quite likely. I’m fine, don’t rush. I won’t be leaving this spot.”

  Alone, I circled the little cave, trailing a hand along the damp walls. Hardy vegetation had wedged itself into any crack it could, and I could use that to track the path the sunlight fell on through the day; I checked a low one with my Identification spell, and found that gathering it had no point, it wasn’t useful to eat or to an alchemist. It was quietly pretty, though, just a little spray of feathery dull green against the yellow-grey rock.

  This wasn’t even close to being enough water for a swim, but my aquian instincts wanted me to get properly wet since I’d started the job. I finally waded deeper into the pool to stand directly under the stream. It wasn’t really all that much water—a shower would have taken forever, especially with all this hair—but it still felt good. Odd little physical pleasures that came with different forms. The underlying mindset that came with this one made it easy to just get lost in the sensations, the thumping and sliding of drops as they made contact and traced out lines on my midnight-blue skin.

  “Nathan?”

  “Coming.” I shook myself back to the present, and went to the entrance to take the two empty buckets, then returned them full.

  “You’re efficient,” she chuckled.

  Then I was alone again. I went back to standing under the water.

  Even with my eyes closed, I saw the light dim briefly; I opened them to look, but saw nothing. Zanshe had mentioned ptarmigans and pigeons, and I’d seen other birds around. For all I knew, a goat had jumped over it. I wasn’t going to get eaten by a bear here. I wasn’t on the Quincunx ring road where I’d be easy to find. I closed my eyes again.

  The next time she came back, she said, “This might be enough, they were slower this time.”

  “Good, but if they still want more, I’ll have to come back here with you. Or if we decide we want to stop long enough for a hot drink, and we need water for the rest of us. Although if I stay here and we don’t need more water, you’ll have to make a trip just to show me the way back.”

  “You looked like you were enjoying yourself. I don’t mind coming back. Usually when I’m out, it’s just Serru and I walking all day. The ornithians are sweet and the wagon is certainly efficient but I like having a chance to stretch.”

  I ughed and waded back into the pool. “I’ll be here.”

  When the light flickered, I didn’t bother to look.

  The next shadow that crossed it didn’t immediately vanish, but before I could realize that something had changed and look up, I felt something much heavier than water strike me, and heavy dark fabric fell over my head. As I reached up to cw it out of the way, I felt motion in the water, motion shifting the air, and rge cold hands seized my wrists. An extra twist of fabric or a length of rope forced the heavy fabric into my mouth and was tied behind my head, muffling any attempt at a shout. Hands dragged at me, pulling me out of the water, out of the little cave. Kicking and fighting gained me not a single inch, I felt no pain flinches, no recoil. I felt more fabric being wound around my hands as my wrists were tied behind me, leaving me no way to access my HUD. Something that might have been a fist struck the side of my head, which made starbursts against the darkness and I lost my footing entirely.

  Disoriented as I was, I still couldn’t miss the way the air reacted with the narrow rock-walled path, and then the way it stopped doing that. The hands let go and I stumbled, falling painfully to one knee; a foot kicked the other leg out from under me, and with my hands tied, I couldn’t catch my bance. A foot smmed into my back, at kidney-level, and another into my abdomen. I curled as much as I could in an attempt to protect the tter, wishing desperately for a way to do the same for my head. Breathing fast in pain and panic, I couldn’t get enough air through the heavy fabric that blocked light.

  Past the pain and despite the muffling effect, I heard a low male voice say, “You obstinate fucking idiot. I have been trying to get you to stop and listen. I tried being nice. I tried getting your attention without violence. I tried to meet you halfway. Now you’ve got her all stirred up, and that means we’re all going to pay for it. You, me, and everyone else, and they won’t even know why. I am fucking sick of this. You don’t take hints or listen to requests. Fine, now maybe I’ll have your attention.”

  Oh no.

  The kicks that punctuated the speech blurred together, but I felt something hit my head again. Everything went hazy, staggering along the edge of consciousness. I thought I struggled when hands dragged me up off the ground and away somewhere, but even my aquian sense of direction couldn’t tell me which way we were going.

  Then the hands gave me a push, and there was no ground under me, and I wasn’t a felid this time to nd on my feet. The impact forced all the air out of my lungs, and my only immediate concern became the desperate need to fill them despite the folds of fabric. A second impact, the volume and sharpness edging my pain meter up just enough to be perceptible, made the stone under me vibrate.

  No one was kicking me or moving me or even close to me. I could feel no motion of air, no whisper of breath, nothing except that stone beneath me.

  What the hell had just happened?