Moon Rising (19 page)

“I have to get back to my sleeping cave,” Moon said, leaping to her feet and slipping on the wet stone.

“Oh,” Turtle said, “uh, sure. Did you figure something out?”

“I hope so,” she said. “Can you lead me back?”

As they hurried up the tunnel, leaving wet footprints behind them, she told him about the conversation she’d heard two nights ago. “I wonder if I should tell someone,” she said nervously. “Like Starflight or Sunny? Or — Tsunami?” She shivered all the way to her toes at the thought of trying to tell the ferocious SeaWing something like this.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I say keep it to yourself until you know more. You never know how someone will —”

“Shh.” Moon put out her tail to stop him from moving. They were near the history cave again; the lingering smell of smoke filled the air, along with a deep chill from all the frostbreath Winter had sprayed. The corpses of Bigtail and Carnelian were gone, leaving dark imprints on the ash-covered floor, surrounded by the marks of several talons.

Someone was in the cave, poking through the ashes…. She could sense two dragons arguing. She motioned to Turtle to stay quiet, and they crept forward until they could hear the voices clearly.

“We’ll use the dreamvisitor to tell Glory tonight. She needs to know about Bigtail, at least — but maybe she can also tell us what to do.” It was Sunny, all her thoughts twisted in a knot of guilt and grief and distress.

“
I’m
the Head of School,” Tsunami said. “
I
can tell you what to do. That’s my job
and
my favorite thing in life, I mean, seriously.”

She was trying to break the tension, but Sunny was barely listening. “Should we shut down the school? Send everyone home?”

“That’s what
she
wants,” Tsunami said fiercely, her mind bristling like it was full of spears. Moon heard her pick up a piece of debris and throw it at the wall. “Sunny, you know Queen Scarlet must have been behind this. She’s trying to destroy this great thing we’re building, and we
won’t let her.
”

“But what if she hurts more students? And who’s working with her? And how can we stop her if we can’t find her? And how can we keep them all safe?” Sunny’s voice broke.

“We’ll catch the dragon who did this,” Tsunami said. “I promise, Sunny. I will rip them apart myself.”

“I should send a message to Queen Ruby about Carnelian,” Sunny said, watching the ashes of a map crumble under her claws. “Maybe we should notify all the queens, in case any of them want to withdraw their students.”

Tsunami groaned. “That means my mother will be here by sunrise, and Anemone will be gone twenty seconds later.”

“How did it start?” Sunny wondered. There was a shuffling noise as she came closer to the entrance. “Umber said there was an explosion … and it must have been something near the doorway, where Carnelian was … Tsunami, what’s this?”

Out in the tunnel, Moon and Turtle exchanged glances.

“I don’t know,” Tsunami said. “But I know I hate them. There are others all over the floor, buried in the ash. I’ve already been stabbed a few times and it’s like they have TEETH. I practically have to dig them out of my scales. No, don’t give it to me; it’ll just attack me like the others did.”

Turtle held out the little ball of thorns and gave Moon a look. She nodded, guessing it was the same kind of thing Sunny and Tsunami had found.

Apparently that wasn’t quite what the look meant, though, because he nodded back and then stepped right into the history cave. Moon jumped back, startled, and then hurried after him.
That would have been a useful moment for mind reading,
she thought to herself.
She
would have voted for staying hidden, but it was too late for that.

Tsunami and Sunny whirled around and blinked at them.

“Turtle!” Tsunami said. “You shouldn’t —”

“Hey, sorry,” he said. “We heard what you were saying and — I might know what this is.” Turtle held up the thorn ball, which matched the one in Sunny’s palm.

Moon tried to take shallow breaths. The air in here smelled worse than smoke; it smelled like scorched dragon flesh. It was colder, too, this close to the melting film of frostbreath. The ashes drifting over her claws were heavy and damp; they got in between her scales and stuck to her wings like insidious gray cobwebs. It was horrible, in every way.

Horrible, too, to hear the instant flare of suspicion from Tsunami’s mind.
What is Moon doing here? Why was she listening to us?
Sunny’s reaction was less suspicious, but perhaps only because she was too tired and worried to think of it.

“Yeah? What are those?” Tsunami asked her brother. “And where’d you get that one?”

“Moon got hit by it when the explosion went off,” he said, pointing to the wound on her shoulder. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen these before. After the attack on the Summer Palace, we found things like it on several of the surviving SeaWings.” He turned the ball over and cut into it with one of his claws, revealing a bright green interior. “It’s a seed pod. It comes from something called a dragonflame cactus, which grows only in high altitudes, in the mountains.”

“How did you figure that out?” Sunny asked.

“My mother tortured a SkyWing prisoner until he told us,” Turtle said matter-of-factly. Sunny and Tsunami both winced. “He said the SkyWings use the cacti as bombs, because when they come into contact with fire, they explode, sending fiery bits of cactus and seed pods everywhere. I think the idea is that if you tried to exterminate them by burning them all, they’d first of all attack you back, and second of all release all these seeds so that a hundred more cacti would grow from the ashes. Kind of a cool evolutionary thing that makes sense if you’re a plant trying to survive on a mountain full of fire-breathing dragons, right?”

He looked up and caught the expressions on their faces. “But, uh, horrible, obviously.”

“So it’s a SkyWing weapon,” Tsunami said. She studied the floor. “Probably set with some kind of long fuse, slowly burning until it reached the cactus. Hidden somehow. Hmmm.”

“You think one of our SkyWing students did this?” Sunny said, running through the list in her head.
Flame is pretty angry at the whole world — Fatespeaker and Glory were both worried about his aggression problems. But he’s more the type to lose his temper and start a fight over prey, not plan to set a fire from a distance.

“Or someone who was told what to do by a SkyWing,” Tsunami pointed out. “A SkyWing like Queen Scarlet, for instance.” She paused, then added, “Or … there is another SkyWing here. One who’s betrayed us before.”

Sunny was already shaking her head. “It couldn’t be Peril.”

“Why not?” Tsunami said. “We don’t know what she’s capable of.”

“No, I mean, it
couldn’t
be,” Sunny said. “She couldn’t touch a cactus like that without it blowing up. Think about it.”

Tsunami frowned, then snorted grudgingly. “I hate it when you’re smarter than me.”

Sunny suddenly seemed to remember that Moon and Turtle were there. “You should go back to your sleeping caves,” she said. “We’ve told everyone to stay there until we figure out what to do next.”
Oh, I shouldn’t have let them hear me speculate. What if they tell everyone? I keep forgetting to act like I’m in charge instead of one of them.
“Please don’t say anything about this for now, all right?”

Moon nodded, and Turtle handed the seed pod over to Sunny.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Sunny said. “It’s so awful. It shouldn’t have happened here.”

“But we’ll get to the bottom of it,” Tsunami promised. “We’ll find the dragon who set that bomb, and then I will tear off his wings and hang him from the eastern peak of Jade Mountain.”

Sunny winced. “Tsunami, yuck.”

“Can we check on Tamarin before we go back to our caves?” Moon asked softly.

Tsunami shook her head. “Clay is taking care of her. We’ll let you know soon how she’s doing.”

Moon nodded, and then followed Turtle out into the tunnel again.

The sleeping corridor was quiet to dragon ears, but Moon could hear the churning fear and rumors and guesses rolling through everyone’s minds. Very few of them were actually asleep, although by now it was fully dark outside.

She hesitated before they reached her cave, thinking of Carnelian and Kinkajou, and how different everything had been this morning.

“It’ll be all right,” Turtle said. “You’ll find out who did this. Let me know if I can help.”

Moon watched him disappear into his sleeping cave, where Umber was worrying about Marsh and Sora. She closed her eyes and found Sora in a deep sleep, somewhere farther away … the infirmary, Moon guessed. She must have been given tranquilizer darts, too.

She listened to the minds around her for a long moment, but no one was chuckling gleefully over their arson today. Icicle, Pike, and Mightyclaws were asleep. She could feel the strange fuzz of Onyx’s brain but couldn’t tell whether she was asleep or awake. Flame was not in his sleeping cave at all; he was somewhere else in the mountain, and she could only hear a distant echo of his bitter, angry thoughts.

What can you hear?
she asked Darkstalker.
Do you know who did it?

You could leave, you know,
he answered without answering.
You don’t need these dragons. Your friends are furious with you and that IceWing is dangerous. But you have me. If you leave now, I could help you find my talisman, and then you could free me. Who would care about a small fire then? We could change the world, Moon. No more war. No more killing. We could do that together, you and I.

Moon didn’t know what to say to that. She could hear Kinkajou, Qibli, and Winter all thinking about her, and Darkstalker was right. It would be safer to get out of here. But she didn’t want to leave them. She didn’t want to lose them from her life if there was any chance of keeping them.

She folded in her wings and ducked into her sleeping cave.

Kinkajou was curled in her hammock with her eyes closed.

Moon slid over to her nest, trying not to look at Carnelian’s ledge. It felt empty in here without her fuming and muttering in the background.

“All right,” Kinkajou said suddenly, without opening her eyes. “I know this is silly. Of course you know perfectly well that I’m awake and pretending to be asleep. But can you do me a favor and pretend you believe it, please?”

“I will,” Moon agreed.

She lay down and wrapped her tail close around her. She wished there were a way to shut out Kinkajou’s thoughts, which were bouncing and tumbling all over the place like monkeys that had eaten the wrong berries:
I wouldn’t have lied to her like that. I can’t believe Carnelian’s dead. What would it be like to hear what everyone is thinking? Who would I want to listen to? Maybe Winter, he seems very mysterious, but I guess he isn’t to Moon. I hope Tamarin is all right. I wish they’d let me see her. Maybe I can sneak out and see her tonight. Is Moon listening to all this? Does she know anyone else who can read minds? Would she tell us if we asked? What if all the NightWings have these powers? But Bigtail obviously didn’t, or he wouldn’t have gotten blown up. Is she asleep yet? I wonder if I should tell someone about her. Maybe Glory. Glory would know what to do.

You could always kill her,
Darkstalker suggested.
I’m kidding! Ha ha, evil nightmare dragon, right?

That’s not funny,
Moon said.

Too soon?
he asked.
All right, I’ll wait another two thousand years to make jokes about my evilness.

Moon tried to focus on the dreams of the dragons along the corridor. Pike was dreaming about swimming with whales, except he kept seeing Tamarin’s burnt face on all of them. Someone else’s dreams were of a battle, grappling with dragons in a blue sky with a waterfall down below. Others were deeper, in a sleep without dreams, and Winter was just sliding into sleep. From the jittery, speeding feeling of Qibli’s brain, Moon guessed he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.

She didn’t think she’d be able to either, but as the hours passed she felt her wings getting heavier, and her eyelids kept trying to close.
Need to stay awake. I have to catch Scarlet if she comes with the dreamvisitor.

More dragons were asleep now, close to midnight, and it was harder to tell whose dream was whose as muddled images overlapped and swam together.

Moon wasn’t sure if she was dreaming herself when she finally heard the slithery voice from two nights ago.

Is it done?

No. It was … an eventful day. We’ve had a few deaths, but not the ones you want.

I am not a patient dragon. Your time is running out.

Oh my, do you have a scroll for those?
Ominous Clichés for Aspiring Villains
?

I wouldn’t recommend mocking me. It hasn’t ended well for anyone.

You sound pretty menacing for a dragon who has to make others do her killing for her.