Sunwing (18 page)

“Maybe half; they might be safe on the other side, but everyone else is still inside the chamber.”

“My son?” said Cortez.

“He’s alive, but he didn’t make it through. He’s with us here. The tunnelers are already at work, trying to reopen the passage.” Shade swallowed. Their retreat was cut off. They were trapped
inside. Ishmael’s flanks heaved wildly for air; it was too much for him, the idea of dying here.

“We’ve got to get out,” he said, his voice becoming dangerously shrill. “We’ve got to!”

“It’s all right,” Marina said soothingly, trying to quiet him. “They’ll tunnel through, don’t worry.”

“I’ll go get Mom and Caliban,” said Shade to Marina. “Go back to the tunnel mouth.”

She looked at him closely. “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Shade?”

“I’m coming back.”

“Because if you’re going somewhere, it’s not without me.”

“It’s okay,” he said, and he lit, flying low through the chamber toward its far end, where a pale wash of light cut the darkness slightly. He didn’t dare call out, but only used his echo vision, sweeping the walls and ceilings for his mother.

And there she was, flying toward him at breakneck speed, Caliban at her side.

“They’re coming!” Caliban said. “We’ve got to leave now.” His heart pumped with panic. He wheeled tightly and raced with them back through the chamber.

“Have they found him?” his mother panted, and he knew she meant Cassiel.

“No,” he said bluntly. “We’re too late. They’re already gone.” She said nothing, just kept on flying. By now everyone was assembled at the chamber’s far end, where they’d entered. The freed rats cowered anxiously as Cortez’s remaining tunnelers tried to dig a way out.

“The jungle bats are coming!” Caliban said.

“How many?” Cortez asked.

“Lots,” Ariel said. “They’re coming from above, from the spiral steps. I shot up sound and all I could see were wings and teeth.”

“They’re coming back for more victims,” said Ishmael. Cortez looked down into the shaft of bones. “How much longer?”

“Ten minutes.”

“They’ll be here in one,” said Caliban.

Shade looked at the general. “We’ve got to release the owls.”

“They stay where they are!” said Cortez, baring his teeth at him. “I won’t be slaughtered by owls!”

“With them fighting, we’ll at least have a chance! I know one of them, let me talk to him!”

Shade looked at the far end of the chamber, jabbing sound as far as he could into the distance, waiting for the first silvery flarings of giant cannibal wings. “We don’t have much time,” he said.

“He’s right, General.” It was Caliban. “We need allies now. The rats are too weak to fight, most of them.”

Cortez twitched his whiskers in annoyance. “Quickly, then, but only if they agree to our truce.” He flicked his head at two guards. Come with us.”

Shade led the way over to the stone mound that held the owls. Marina found the stick perched atop a row of skulls and helped Shade drive it into the hole.

With the rats on their hind legs pushing, and Shade, Marina, and Ariel driving against it using their wings, the stone door began to move quickly.

“Stop!” called Cortez when it was open just a crack. “Speak to your friend, Silverwing.”

“Orestes!” he called into the mound.

He waited for the surprised hoots to subside, hoping desperately
that Orestes was still alive. He had no idea how he would talk to the other owls, convince them to a truce.

“Who is that?” came Orestes’ voice, and then Shade saw half his face pressed against the opening. “Shade Silverwing?”

“We’re letting you out, but you’ve got to make the others promise not to attack us, rats or northern bats. We don’t have much time, Orestes.”

From inside the prison he could hear Orestes speaking hurriedly in an unrecognizable owl language. In a moment, Orestes was back at the opening.

“You have their word,” Orestes called back. Shade looked at Cortez, and he nodded.

“All the way!” the general shouted, and they rolled the stone back.

Orestes ducked through the opening. “Thank you,” he said. “No, you’ll have to fight your way out,” Shade told him hurriedly.

“You’ve given us a chance at life,” said Orestes.

“We have a common enemy!” shouted General Cortez as the owls began to push their way out from the stone mound. “The cannibals have broken all laws of the jungle, they have taken more than they need for food for their dark sacrifices. They have stolen our children, our mates. Let each of us do what we can to survive!”

Shade never thought he’d be glad to see so many owls, but he was, as dozens emerged into the chamber. Though many were still downy with youth, he took some reassurance in their sheer size, their hooked beaks, and muscular chests. Now they had a fighting chance!

Shade heard the discordant creak of many wings in the distance. “They’re coming,” he said.

“Is that the only way out?” asked a large male owl with a brilliant white corona around each eye.

“We tunneled in from the east,” said Cortez, but our retreat has caved in. Even if we reopen it, I fear it’s not big enough for you.”

“So be it,” said the owl. “There is only one way for us. We will fight them head-on. Let us all have luck.”

Shade cast sound into the distance and sucked in his breath. A jagged thrashing of wings and teeth was moving toward them. But a slithering noise directly overhead pulled his focus back. “Did you hear that?” he asked Marina. She was looking overhead, puzzled. “What is it?” Cortez demanded. “Don’t know …” said Shade. “I don’t see anything.” But he knew, he knew they were being watched. He could practically hear the breathing now. His eyes were drawn instinctively to the rows upon rows of human skulls. Could they be alive by some infernal magic, their mouths about to shriek, their eyes blaze? Their eyes.

Beyond the lifeless sockets of the skulls were real eyes. Then a smudge of dark movement. Hair, a flash of leathery wing.
They’ve been watching us all along.
“They’re in the skulls!” Shade shouted.

From the open jaws lunged long snouts and heads. Large, moist bodies dragged through. The cannibal bats unfolded themselves, clinging to the skulls’ surfaces, flaring their massive wings. They lit, circling high in the chamber, their numbers growing until they were like a roiling thundercloud.

“Look, bones to add to bones,” Shade heard one say in a voice thick with phlegm.

When they attacked, slashing down upon them like black lightning, it was unlike anything Shade had ever known or imagined.

His whole world contracted to the inches around his body as he veered and rolled to avoid gushing jaws and flexed claws.

He heard a powerful beating of wings and knew that must be the owls, launching their assault. The noise was indescribable, the shrieking, the percussive
thud
of a thousand wings in action, screams of pain—it all seered into his head and clouded his echo vision. It was like flying half-blind.

He was alone. Where was Marina? Ariel? Wings flashed all around him. Something lashed against him and he bit it, and was rolling again.

He saw his mother being dragged through the air in the claws of a cannibal, and their eyes met for a second but there was nothing to say, nothing he could do, because there were teeth snapping at his own tail and he could only follow his body’s lead and flip and tilt and dive to stay alive.

“Into the bones!” he heard someone cry, and then again, “Into the bones!”

And then he realized it was Cortez. Shade banked, could see the rats slinking down into the sea of bones for cover, making their way slowly back toward the tunnel mouth. He dove and plunged beneath the surface, wings drawn over his face for protection as bones knocked against him.

He opened his eyes, kept still, tried to get his bearings.

A set of claws clenched into the bones, lifting femurs and skulls away, trying to flush him out. He scuttled on, deeper. He saw hair, a body, in front of him. “Hey!” he hissed.

It was Caliban.

“We’re going back to the tunnel,” the mastiff whispered, dragging himself on. Shade saw that his right wing was badly torn. “It’s the only chance. Got to dig ourselves out.”

“They’ve got my mother!”

“Get to the tunnel!” Caliban said, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Where’s Marina?”

“I don’t know.”

Marina trembled violently among the bones, staring at the space where, just a second before, Ariel had been. She’d seen the claws come down, plunge into Ariel’s shoulders, and haul her up and away. More bones clattered nearby, and she could see the talons stabbing down all around her. She’d be next. Where was Shade?

Her eyes fixed on a splintered thighbone, its end viciously spiked. She gritted her teeth and gripped it in her forearms. A huge hole was suddenly scooped out before her, and she recoiled. The cannibal bat thrashed its wings overhead, and then folded them, ready to drop on top of her.

Marina swung the splintered bone up just in time, and the jungle bat impaled itself on the spike, toppling onto her. Its jaws were still snapping convulsively, and Marina wrenched herself clear before the teeth sank into her wing.

“We have the tunnel!”

The voice carried through the bones. Cortez, not far away; just a few more minutes and she’d catch up.

“We have the tunnel! Retreat!”

But where was Shade?

Shade heard Cortez call for the retreat, and he faltered, choking for breath. Retreat. Leave his father, mother. And what about the sun? Had they saved the sun, at least?

“Retreat!” Caliban hissed over his shoulder. “Come on, Silverwing, you’ve done all you can!”

Suddenly Ishmael was beside him. “Are you going?” Ishmael said.

“No.”

“Me neither. I won’t leave my brother again.”

“Can we get to the top?”

“There’re fissures in the stone, I know them,” said Ishmael. “That’s how I lived. But we need to get to the spiral steps first.”

“You lead the way, I’ll make sure we get there.”

“How?”

“Sound. I’ll make us invisible. Don’t ask me how, just fly.” They locked eyes, and broke the surface of the sea of bones, wings open, beating hard.

The scene was still one of indescribable chaos, owls and bats clashing in midair, loose feathers swirling into a dense fog. “Stay close,” he told Ishmael.

Around them he sang out a shroud of darkness, a slippery weave of sound that deflected other bats’ echoes. He and Ishmael were as good as invisible. It wasn’t perfect: Sound leaked out through the seams of his frail shell, but in the chaos it was enough for them to veer through the aerial battlefield almost completely unnoticed.

Up and up they darted to the top of the chamber, and then skimmed along the ceiling, Shade’s wingtips grazing stone. Cannibal bats streamed past them into the chamber, and Shade saw a few owls fighting their way valiantly down the long tunnel that would take them back to the jungle. He hoped fervently they made it.

Virtually all his energy, though, was concentrated on his cloak of invisibility, and he had almost no time to breathe.

“Here,” said Ishmael.

They’d reached a set of steps spiraling steeply up, but their path was almost instantly blocked by more cannibals flooding down.

“This way now,” Ishmael said, and led them hurtling toward the wall. Shade followed, wincing as he wedged himself into a narrow fissure between stones.

Shade exhaled, and his shroud of invisibility melted away.

“Follow,” said Ishmael.

The crevice was rib-crushingly narrow, and Shade slithered through on his belly, up and up after Ishmael. Tendrils of daylight filtered down through these cracks, and he realized they must be getting close to the top of the pyramid.

“Here, here,” Ishmael whispered.

The passage suddenly swelled open, and before him were two round holes through which poured dim daylight. After the darkness it was almost blinding, but his heart surged. The sun was still there. Not dead. Not eclipsed. Not yet.

He saw he was perched on a white chalky material, not stone, and with a start realized he was inside a Human skull. The holes were eye sockets, and below him were clenched teeth.

He moved his head to the eye socket and peered out.

What he first saw was a circular opening in the high ceiling, and dead center was the sun, or what was left of it. He could almost see it shriveling, being eaten up by darkness. So blighted was it, he scarcely needed to look away, though he felt he must. It was like looking at something dying, and it terrified him.

The chamber was rectangular. Feeble light played on the images carved into the stone walls. He was not at all surprised to see the feathered serpent, the jaguar, the two-headed mantis. And in each corner of the room, the slash of an eye, watching.

He looked down. Directly beneath the circular portal was a
vast stone disc, its surface covered with dozens of northern bats, their wings stretched and pinned flat by the cannibals. Clustered around the Stone were more bats, gripped by guards.

“My brother,” he heard Ishmael whisper beside him, “I see him!”

Shade’s eyes skittered across the splayed bats, ready for sacrifice. Where’s Chinook, where’s Ariel? Where’s my father? But he had no more time to look, because Goth soared low over the stone.

Shade recognized him instantly, the black band on his forearm, the cut of his wings, the crest of fur atop his massive skull. Another bat flew alongside him, a much older one with a crooked spine, and he seemed concerned with the sun through the portal. “Let us begin!” roared Goth

“Not yet,” said the other. “We must wait until the sun is fully extinguished. You remember Zotz’s words. One hundred
within
the darkness of the eclipse. To begin now would waste precious hearts!”

“Have they captured the intruders yet?” Goth shouted at a guard who had just flown up into the chamber from the spiraling steps in the floor.

“Not yet, King Goth. But we will have them all before long.”

“If we are but one short of a hundred, you will make up for the lost offering! Bring me owls and rats now! We are about to begin!”