The Scarab Path by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page A

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