“If you hit your head on a piece of driftwood when you landed, that might be all right.”
“Your adoration warms my heart.” It saddened Vorik that he had to keep vexing her. If only…
Apparently having no interest in their conversation, Teyla walked toward the marble bed without waiting to see if Fel accompanied her. Once again, she held her magnifying glass, and her pack, heavy with books inside, dangled off one shoulder.
“This looks like something the moon god would have made,” she said.
Probably more concerned with finding the orb, Syla waved toward the other side of the laboratory. A few objects glowed from niches carved into the wall and also sat upon the crystalline workstations.
Vorik walked that way with her, but he kept peering past the crystal formations, trying to spot whatever had made those noises. Syla looked like she wanted to avoid it, but Vorik didn’t know if that would be possible. Faint scratches floated out to them, like something scurrying across the hard floor. Were there animals in here, after all? Or were most deterred by the tremendous need to mate that the flowers had instilled?
Those cactuses were such an unlikely item for the storm god to have planted. Vorik wondered if?—
“Oh.”
Syla paused to look at him.
“We think that huge marble bed came later, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” Teyla called to them from where she crouched at its head. “It’s clearly the moon god’s work. There are glowing silver runes all over the back. It’swonderful.”
“Maybe when the gods added the moon-mark to the pillar,” Syla said, “they brought that for… Well, we don’t know what it does. I’m sure it’s more than a spot to lie down and take a nap.”
“I’m going to find out soon,” Teyla declared. “I recognize some of these runes. You would too, Syla. There were some carved into the walls of your temple.”
“Do you think the special cactuses came later too?” Vorik glimpsed movement above.
Wreylith and Agrevlari were circling the area. Looking for them, though Agrevlari glanced toward the mountains more than once.
“Are you asking if the gods planted them?” Syla asked.
“The gods who don’t hate humans. Or animals or anyone. As a nonlethal way to keep them away from this place. For their own good.”
“That might be more of an earth god kind of thing. Prompting people to have orgies in order to save them.”
“People and rabbits.”
“Yes. It’s possible.” Syla gazed toward the back of the laboratory as another cold wind swept in from that direction. “Are we going to need saving soon?”
Vorik looked up again as the dragons stopped circling and flew at top speed back toward the pillar. Something was agitating them.
He flexed his hand around the hilt of his sword. “We might.”
Following the various glows of artifacts, Syla trod deeper into the laboratory. Objects in niches looked like magical versions of the kinds of medical tools she would have enjoyed having in her collection, but she resisted the urge to touch things, suspecting booby-traps. Given the warning on the scroll, she was surprised nothing deadly had yet sprung out at them. The crystalline formations they passed glowed and hummed, emitting energy.Magic.
She didn’t yet see an orb, but it had to be here. She hoped.
Carrying the teal ore and the amphora was tiring, especially since the container wouldn’t fit in Syla’s pack. When more scratching noises came from deeper in the laboratory and Vorik held up a finger, indicating she should wait while he checked on it, she decided to risk setting her belongings down by the bed. Busy studying it and murmuring to herself, Teyla didn’t look like she would leave the area anytime soon. And the dragons couldn’t get it, so it wasn’t as if Agrevlari would swoop down and take the items. Vorik… She only had to worry about Vorik. And he was busy doing?—
“Stay back,” Vorik barked as he sprang onto a chest-high crystal formation.
At first, Syla thought him yelling at whatever he’d spotted, but his glance in her direction promised the words were for her. Hisses responded to him, then clacks, like claws or talons on the floor. Many sets of them.
As Vorik crouched, sword poised, six-legged thigh-high creatures that looked like a cross between a cockroach and a Gila monster rushed into view down various aisles. Antennaewavered, long-slitted tongues darted out, and saliva—or was thatvenom?—glistened on sharp fangs.
Jaws snapped as the giant bug-lizards ran first toward Vorik. But some rushed toward the bed too.
“Climb up on the canopy,” Fel ordered Syla and Teyla, placing himself to block the creatures as Vorik sprang from his perch to land on the back of one of them.
