Sunwing (16 page)

How long did it take sound to travel? And how long before it died, evaporating on the wind, his voice dispersed like little bits of dew on tree leaves.

“Shhhhhhhhh,” said the wind in his ears. “Shhhhhhhhhh.” Like his mother trying to get him to sleep back at Tree Haven.

He was so tired. He should go back. There was no point staying up here, hoping for someone to solve his problems. And the longer he stayed up here, the better chance of getting eaten. His voice wasn’t strong enough, or perhaps it was his ears not sensitive enough to hear a reply. There was nothing but the great emptiness of the sky.

“Shhhhhhhhh,” was all the wind could say to him, and then:

“Shhhhhaaaaaade.”

His name? Or just a trick of the wind? He flared his ears as wide as they would go.

“Shhhhhaaaaade. Lissssten carefffffulllllyyyy.”

Was that Zephyr’s voice? It was so hazy, he couldn’t tell. But he locked on to the sound, rocking in the wind to find the best position.

“I ssssennd you greeeeetingsss from the sssspire.” Zephyr! It
was
Zephyr. He was so surprised and overjoyed, he laughed out loud, and then immediately shut his mouth in case he missed something.

“Aaaaaariel … Mariiiiiinaaaa … traaaaavvvvvelliiiiing to youuuuu.”

He frowned, concentrating so hard, his head ached. Traveling to you? And why no mention of Frieda?

“I don’t understand,” he shouted, then realized this was not a conversation, only a message, traveling millions of wingbeats to his own ears. He would only hear it once. But what did it mean? Were they already on a flying machine, with metal tied to their stomachs? Or were they looking for him? But how would they know where to look?

“Zzzzzotzzzzz willlll reignnnnn … unlesssss … ssssstaaaay … and sssssavvvvve the sssssunnnnn …”

He was worried he was losing words now, only getting fragments. Save the sun?” … and your faaaaaattthhher … ssssstilllll alllllive.”

Eyes shut, he listened for more, but the message had ended. Still alive. Still. It didn’t have a very reassuring ring to it. Did that mean his father was close to death, barely clinging to life, and if Shade didn’t hurry up and do something, he’d be too late?

He felt irritated. He wasn’t a whole lot wiser after all this. He still didn’t know if Marina and the others were safe. And saving the sun?

He shook his head with a snort. “The sun’s fine,” he muttered to himself. “It’s doing fabulous up here, shining away. I don’t think anything’s going to happen to the sun. It’s me I’m worried about. Me and a million other bats.”

Save the sun.

Why should I? Anger suddenly blazed through him. What kind of thing was that to ask someone? How? When? Why couldn’t Nocturna save the sun if it was so important? Let her do some of the hard work for a change, instead of passing it off on runty little bats!

Tired of being used, he thought as he quickened his descent. By Goth, by the Humans. He’d had enough. He would try to save his father, save Marina, his mother, Frieda. That was all that mattered to him now. No more big ideas, no more promises.

Just to survive.

But from the message, it sounded like saving the sun and saving his father were somehow connected; how, he couldn’t imagine. Now, images from his recent dreams were beginning to surface in his mind. An eye opening behind the sun, a permanent night.

He glanced over at the sun, well above the horizon now, skirting across it quickly with his eyes and then shutting them tight to stop the pain. The sun’s shape flared against his eyelids. He frowned.

There was a piece missing.

Not a lot—you’d barely notice unless you were looking hard—but on one side, a tiny sliver had been scraped off its curve, in the same way that the moon gradually withered over the month.

The moon always came back.

Would the sun?

“This is the end of the northern waterways,” said Ulysses from the rudder. “What follows belongs to the kingdoms of the south.”

For the past several hours, Marina had noticed that the tunnels through which the barge floated seemed less well maintained. Their walls were now only mud, soft, oozing. Once, the water had seeped away altogether, and she and Ariel had to get off the deck and work with the rats to drag the boat over a long stretch of muck. Often there was next to no light to guide them, and Marina would use her echo vision to help Ulysses steer through the increasingly mazelike tunnels.

This was their second night on the barge, racing beneath the earth on the rats’ waterways. They had only stopped twice on their journey south. Ulysses would tie the barge to the side, and tunnel to the surface and check the stars to make sure he was still on course. Then they would spend a few hours hunting. Marina circled cautiously with Ariel in these strange new landscapes, the air growing ever warmer. On their last trip upground, there was nothing but sand stretching as far as she could see, and tall, spindly cactuses; but the sky was alive with insects.

On the barge, there was little for Marina or Ariel to do besides sleep; her body seemed to remember its lost winter hibernation, and she passed many hours dozing on the gently rocking boat. At first, she’d kept some part of her mind awake, still suspicious of the rats, but they seemed kind and, most of all, bent on fulfilling the wishes of their gracious king. Harbinger, the ambassador, she particularly liked. He had a shrewd, animated face, his whiskers twitching for emphasis as he spoke.

“Have you been to the south before?” Ariel had asked him shortly after they set out.

“No. In my lifetime there has been little communication between us and our southern cousins. They have always resented the rule of the northern kings, and prefer to remain apart. General Cortez, unless I’m mistaken, is the current ruler, a very independent-minded rat.”

Harbinger must have seen the worried glance Marina gave Ariel.

“I don’t think there’s any cause for alarm, though. They may not assist us, but I doubt they will protest your presence when it is made clear you are under our protection.”

When she wasn’t sleeping, Marina passed time speaking quietly with Ariel, about what might await them, what they should do to find Shade—and sometimes they talked about other things too, better times back in the northern forests, favorite roosts and hunting grounds.

She must have slept again, because a sudden grating jolt woke her. She cast out sound and saw that the river had simply ended. For several hours the water had been flat and stagnant, requiring the rats to pole the barge forward with long sticks. And now the boat had bellied onto the shallows of a broad, muddy bank within a cave. Marina was suddenly aware of how hot it was, even beneath the earth. It made her fur itch.

“The waterways go no farther,” said Ulysses. “We’ve arrived.” Harbinger, flanked by the two soldiers, hopped off the boat and waded ashore. Marina followed with Ariel.

“We must make ourselves known to General Cortez,” Harbinger said, “and then—”

“Stop!” came a gruff voice from a tunnel opening low in the cave wall.

In seconds, a dozen rats had emerged and were facing them at the top of the muddy bank. They were scruffy-looking creatures, powerful in the shoulders, with blunt snouts and pale muzzles.

“Bats!” hissed the lead guard to Harbinger. “You’ve brought bats with you?”

“They are under our protection,” said the emissary cooly. “We travel under orders from King Romulus and—”

“King Romulus,” snorted the guard. “What do we have to do with this northern king? He is no king of ours.”

“—and we ask an audience with General Cortez.” Even as the southern rats shuffled closer threateningly, Harbinger did not flinch, nor did his voice falter. Marina was impressed. She herself was ready to fly.

“We are a small diplomatic envoy,” Harbinger said. “These two soldiers here are my solitary escorts.”

“We know that,” said the guard. “We’ve been watching your boat for the last six hours. We know you’re alone.”

“Then you know we pose no threat. I’d ask you to take us to the general.”

The southern guard sneered again, and turned his back on them. “Follow,” he said curtly, and led the way.

…

General Cortez looked nothing like Marina had expected. Judging from the southern guards, she’d imagined a slovenly, fat rat lounging in a heap of garbage. But the general, in his dry, rock citadel just above the earth’s surface, was slim, and almost elegant. His whiskers grew so close together as to almost form a mustache beneath his nose, and on his chin, his dark hairs formed a trim, triangular beard. Most arresting of all were his eyes: Unlike all the other rats’ eyes Marina had seen, his were incredibly light and translucent. The effect of his gaze was penetrating, like that of two diamonds, which could cut through anything.

Marina could see light through the chinks in the stone-and-stick citadel, and was grateful to finally be aboveground, even if the heat had thickened uncomfortably. She wished she could make herself molt.

“General Cortez,” said Harbinger, “I am an emissary from King Romulus. He has asked me to deliver these two bats to you, in the hopes you may help them look for others of their kind, brought here by Humans.”

“We do not feel generous toward bats,” said Cortez, looking from Marina to Ariel with disdain. “Your cannibal cousins have been ripping the jungle apart, and hunting far more than even they could possibly need. They are violating all laws of sustenance. We have lost countless newborns to them in the last five nights alone. Including my youngest son.” Cortez looked back at Harbinger. “I am surprised your king is so eager to befriend these putrid creatures.”

“General, I am very sorry to hear of your son, but my bat friends have had no part in it, and no knowledge of what the cannibal bats are doing in your kingdom.”

“And do they also have no knowledge of the fire their kind has been pouring down on our jungle and city?”

“We know a bit about that,” said Marina. “But we’ve been forced to do it for the Humans.”

“Have you, now?” Cortez said coolly, and he sounded far from convinced.

“Not us,” said Marina. “We escaped. But there’re others—thousands maybe—who’ve been sent here in Human flying machines. They have metal discs chained to them, and they explode when they land.”

“My son was among them,” Ariel told General Cortez. “And I want to find him. If he’s still alive.”

“Her son,” said Harbinger, “is a personal friend of King Romulus. And it is very important to him that Shade Silverwing be brought home.”

“There are not many survivors, I think,” said Cortez, and his voice had lost some of its iciness.

“But there
are
survivors?” Marina said hopefully. Cortez turned to one of his guards. “Rodriguez, I have heard you speak of a place where these northern bats are gathered.”

“They’ve taken up inside the statue on the cliffs. We have been monitoring them from the base.”

“Take us there, please!” implored Marina. Cortez said nothing.

“King Romulus would be indebted to you, General. And should you need some favor from him in return, now or in the future, he would surely oblige.”

“Very well,” said the rat general curtly. “But only on the condition you take them out of my kingdom. The fewer bats of any sort I have here, the more content I will be. Agreed? Good. Rodriguez, lead them to their friends.”

“A voice on the wind,” said Caliban with a snort. “The wind plays tricks, you should know that. It’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to hear, or maybe what scares you most. You’d be a fool to give it much attention.”

After returning to Statue Haven, Shade had found Caliban hanging awake from his roost, and told him about Zephyr’s message—or what he
thought
was Zephyr’s message. Part of him was relieved by Caliban’s disdain. Maybe it really was nothing more than his own desperation at high altitude. But he was too scared by what he’d seen to give up just yet.

“Look, there’s something wrong with the sun,” he pressed on.

“Flying off alone in full daylight,” muttered Caliban angrily. “Don’t you learn, Silverwing? Do you know how dangerous that was? Not just for you; for everyone. You could’ve been spotted, and led something right back to all of us.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” Shade nodded, contrite for a moment before adding doggedly, “But what about the sun? Ignore my dreams if you want to, ignore the voice. But just go take a look at it yourself.”

“I don’t need to take a look at the sun,” Caliban hissed, hackles rising, lips pulled back over his jagged incisors. For the first time, Shade was afraid of him. He saw how determined he was to leave the jungle; he’d survived two months here, and that was a kind of miracle that could only be temporary. “We’re leaving, first dark. Like I said, you can stay if you want. But I don’t want you trying to change anyone else’s mind. Understand: You poison our escape, and I’ll silence you myself.”

Shade swallowed, feeling utterly alone. Maybe Caliban was right. He’d become dangerous, to himself, to others. Look what had happened to Chinook. And if it weren’t for him, maybe none of the Silverwings would’ve even gone to the Human building in the first place. He’d led them right to it, their dark Promise.

Caliban’s powerful neck relaxed, and he looked away. “The sun is no concern of ours,” he said more quietly.

“No, the Silverwing’s right.”

Shade turned to the voice, and was surprised to see Ishmael’s eyes wide open. The emaciated bat was breathing rapidly, and had obviously heard everything.

“You need rest, Ishmael,” said Caliban, with a trace of irritation. He shot Shade a warning glance.

“I’d forgotten until now,” Ishmael whispered, “but Goth said something after he murdered Hermes. He said,
What must we do … to kill it, to kill the sun.”

“What else did you hear, Ishmael?” Shade asked.

“I was moving, and there was so much noise and wind. Something about the darkness of the eclipse, and more sacrifices.”

“What’s an eclipse?” Caliban asked.

“The sun going out,” said Shade numbly, remembering his dreams, and the image of the sun being eaten away. He shuddered despite the heat. “When?” he asked Ishmael.

The other bat shook his head. “But there was something else about a city, Bridge City, and destroying it with fire.”

“The disc,” said Shade with a start. “He still has a disc from the Humans. Did you see it on him?”

“I can’t …” Ishmael’s forehead creased, eyes closed with the effort of remembering. Shade felt guilty, forcing him back to such hideous images. “I … no, I can’t remember.” His breath whistled through his throat, and he hung limply, exhausted.

Shade looked carefully at Caliban, trying to gauge his reaction to all this.

“Zephyr said Zotz will reign unless we save the sun.”

“Any ideas, little bat?” Caliban said grimly. “I’ve never had much interest in prophecies and riddles.”

“I’m not too crazy about them myself anymore,” said Shade with a bitter laugh. “I don’t like this any more than you, believe me.”

Caliban turned away. “I’m not the leader your father was,” he said to Shade. “Maybe he would’ve known what to make of all this. I don’t. All I want is to save as many as I can, bring us back north. Home.”

The word tugged at Shade’s heart. How he longed for it, wherever and whatever it was now.

“But it doesn’t matter where we go if Zotz kills the sun,” he said. “If this is the god they worship, then he must be strong. Stronger than Nocturna, I suppose, or why hasn’t she stopped him herself?”

From deep below them, at the very base of Statue Haven, came the faint but distinct whisper of earth and rock shifting. Caliban heard it too, and lit.

“Come with me,” he told Shade.

Shade followed him lower through the statue’s torso, and then down its left leg, which veered off at a slight angle. When they’d
reached the knee, Caliban pulled back, circling. Shade peered down into the darkness at the foot of the statue.

“Rat,” he heard Caliban mutter in disgust.

With his echo vision, Shade could see the rodent’s head poke up from a narrow opening inside the foot. It wrinkled its nose high in the air, sniffing, its sharp front teeth bared. Then its head pulled back suddenly. Shade looked after it, anxious; were there more coming? Still, he didn’t see how the rats could scale the sheer, smooth surfaces of the statue’s interior. Even if they could, the bats would simply fly clear.

A second rat struggled up through the hole and began to shake the earth carefully from its fur. There was something in this brisk, almost elegant motion that was remarkably familiar to him. He noticed that this rat’s fur had a startling brightness to it, much thicker and softer-looking than any rat he’d ever seen. Then he saw wings flare, rustle briefly, refold.

Shade gaped. How could this be? A
bat
in the company of a rat? Maybe he was mistaken. He looked more closely, bombarding the creature with sound, and when he saw the eyes, he knew. Instantly he was hurtling downward, hearing Caliban’s exclamation of warning behind him, telling him to come back, but it sounded a million wingbeats away.

“Marina?” Shade called out. “Marina!”

They were a tangle of wings as they tumbled over one another, nuzzling their faces into the other’s neck and cheek, sniffing ecstatically. He pulled back and looked at her, just to make sure it really was her. It absolutely was.

“You came for me!” he said in amazement.

“Of course I did,” said Marina with a laugh, her eyes glistening. “We both did.” She nodded off to one side.

We? Shade turned. His mother waited beside him. She took
his face gently between her folded wings. Forehead creased, she just gazed at him intently, as if mapping his every feature. Then she caught sight of the ugly scar on his stomach, and tears spilled from her eyes. She looked so tired, he was overtaken by a wave of regret and gratitude.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “How did you find me, how did you know where …?” He looked from his mother to Marina, suddenly at a complete loss for words. For the first time in so many nights, he was suffused with an unexpected sense of safety, and he felt all the tightly wound things inside him start to uncoil; he couldn’t stop his body from trembling. He felt Marina fold her wings around him along with his mother, and he let himself surrender, just for a moment, to the feeling that everything was going to be all right now.

He made them tell their story first, and Marina launched into a hurried account of how they’d escaped the Human building and met up with Achilles Graywing, then the journey to Bridge City, and their meeting with King Romulus. When he heard about Frieda’s flagging health, he felt no sudden shock of dismay: It seemed just another sorrowful weight to add to all the rest. “Will she live?” he heard himself ask.

Ariel shook her head as if to say, I don’t know.

“But we can go now,” Marina said to him. “The boat’s waiting.” Shade could say nothing for a moment, so strong was his urge to simply nod and hurry away with them. He exhaled, and pulled back. Where to begin?

“There are others here,” he said.

“Sure,” said Marina impatiently. “They’ll come too.” She glanced over at Caliban, who had by this time settled warily on the ground, at a suspicious distance from Harbinger and the two guards who had accompanied them.

“How many others survived?” Ariel asked the mastiff bat.

“Twenty-six,” he said, eyes not straying from the rodents.

“Just twenty-six?” Ariel murmured, her face sorrowful. “But they took hundreds…. “

“Most got killed in the explosions,” Caliban said simply.

“Caliban found me in the jungle,” Shade explained. “He brought me back here to Statue Haven. Me and Chinook,” he added painfully.

“Chinook too?” said his mother, and Shade saw in her face genuine surprise and joy that another Silverwing—a newborn she’d seen born and grow—had survived as well.

“He’s not here,” he said with difficulty. “It was my fault. The jungle bats caught him last night while we were hunting.” He cast a quick, guilty glance at Marina, wanting to see her reaction: Had she really come for him, or was it really Chinook she’d most hoped to find? “But he still might be alive,” he told her.

“How?” Marina asked, ears pricking.

“They’ve taken a lot of us as prisoners,” said Caliban, “back to their pyramid.”

“Cassiel?” Ariel said, looking at Shade; he knew she expected to hear the worst, but there was still a tremor of hope in her voice.

“He’s alive, Mom. The cannibals caught him five nights ago, before I even got here. But he’s alive.”

“How can you be sure?” she asked.

“That’s what Zephyr said.”

“Zephyr’s here?” said Marina in amazement.

“No, but I talked to him,” Shade said breathlessly, “and he told me Cassiel was still alive, and also that the sun was in danger, and if it dies, Zotz rules the skies forever.”

He knew he must sound half-crazed; he could see the way everyone was looking at him. He started at the beginning, from
the moment he was caught by the Humans and chained with the metal disc. Even now he felt removed from it. They were things that had already happened, and he’d spent so many days and nights just surviving minute by minute. Only the now seemed real to him.

“Goth survived?” said Marina in dull horror when he told them about Ishmael’s escape from the cannibals’ pyramid.
“And
he’s king now.”

Marina just snorted in disgust. “Of course he is. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bat.”

And then Shade told them how he’d shouted a message across the world to Zephyr in the spire, and heard his muffled reply:
Save the sun or Zotz will reign.

“My plan was to fly north tonight,” said Caliban. “And I still say we keep to it. I’m sorry for Cassiel; I’m sorry for Chinook and the others. But there’s nothing we can do. And this matter of the sun, this isn’t for us to deal with. We need the guidance of our elders, and maybe we can come back with a bigger force.”

“It’ll be too late by then,” said Shade with a conviction that surprised him. What was it, the urgency of his dreams, or the missing piece of the sun he’d already seen? But he was certain they only had a matter of nights, maybe even hours, before the sun would be swallowed up altogether. “We can’t go.”

“What’re you saying, Shade?” Marina demanded, and he could already detect that familiar edge of exasperation in her voice. “That
you’ve
got to save the sun? I mean, this is big, Shade, right? Even for you, this is huge! Were you planning on doing this all by yourself?”

“You think
I
like this!” Shade snapped.

“Yeah, I do. Trust you to come up with the biggest problem ever—”

“I didn’t
come up
with it—”

“—save the sun! You know, we came a long way to get you. It wasn’t easy. Don’t you want to just go home?”

“What about the others, what about
Chinook—
”

“This is not helping, you two,” said Ariel sharply, and Shade looked down in shame, face burning beneath his fur. Bickering in front of everyone like newborns.

Ariel turned to Caliban. “Even if we made it back north, there’s no help there. The owls are ready to wage war. Every free bat’s needed to fight. There’re a million of us at Bridge City, and the owls are on their way.”

“Bridge City?” Shade shot a worried glance at Caliban. “Ishmael said that was where Goth would drop his disc after the eclipse.” He pictured the size of the owl’s explosion he’d seen from a distance: One of those in the right place could wipe out a million bats.

Shade squeezed his eyes so tightly shut that light flared behind his eyelids. How could they stop all this? It was too much.

“Why won’t Nocturna help us!” he demanded in fury. “I’ve seen what Zotz can do. Save Goth from lightning, heal his wings, eat the sun bit by bit! Why doesn’t Nocturna ever show herself!”

“You’ve survived,” said Ariel. “You didn’t die in the explosions.”

“No, but a thousand others did.”

“We found you.”

He grunted, unconvinced. Was that Nocturna’s doing, or just luck?

“And she’ll help us rescue Cassiel and Chinook and all the others,” Ariel said.

Shade was startled by the certainty in her voice. All his life, she’d never talked much about Nocturna, or the Promise. How could she have so much confidence in her now?

“I’m not leaving,” Ariel said.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Caliban said angrily. “There are thousands of these cannibal bats at the pyramid. You’ll never even get inside.”

Shade shook his head, fearing that Caliban was right. Marina was wrong if she thought he wanted to be a hero. He wanted to go home right now, just like her. “And what about saving the sun?” he said heavily. “What does that mean?”

“The sacrifices.”

Shade looked up to see Ishmael, limping down through the air toward them.

“I remember now,” Ishmael croaked. “King Goth said they need to make a hundred sacrifices during the eclipse. That’s why they’re taking so many prisoners in the jungle. Bats, owls, rats. They need a hundred offerings for Zotz. And that gives him the power to kill the sun.”

Shade nodded slowly, understanding. “So, what if we take them away? Stop the sacrifices, and Zotz can’t kill the sun. Does that make sense?”

“Then saving the bats and saving the sun is the same thing,” Ariel said.

Caliban was shaking his head. “I admire you all, your determination. But this thing you’re talking about, it just isn’t possible. We don’t have the force.”