Firewing (23 page)

“Your son will soon be dead,” Zotz told him, his gaunt heads looming closer. “And so too will you. This is no tragedy. Death comes to all creatures. And all bats must come to my kingdom. You and your son will see each other again.”

The words were spoken seemingly without malice, and Shade, the fur of his face matted with tears, couldn’t help feeling a rush of gratitude for this promise of reunion with his son. He stared at the three-headed Cama Zotz, unsettled. He would almost have
preferred cruel mockery. He detested compassion from this god who had imprisoned him and was waiting with him here until his murder.

“And then what?” Shade said. “We’ll be enslaved in your mines, I suppose.”

“For that, you must blame your own god’s tyranny.”

“Nocturna?” he said, startled not so much by what Zotz had said, but by the simple fact he had mentioned her at all. “She
exists?
”

“She was my twin,” Zotz said. “We were meant to rule equally—Nocturna, the world of the living; me, the world of the dead. I was content with my role, for I knew the world of the dead would very quickly become the larger and greater kingdom. I ruled well, and loved all my subjects. I gave them an endless night which they could inhabit. I gave them homes like those they were used to. I gave them places where they could remember their past lives eternally. I
eased their pain
—took it away altogether so they could forget and know bliss!”

Shade thought of the vast cave where the bats fossilized and plunged into that terrible river of oblivion. Was that bliss to them?

“But after a time, despite my efforts, some of the dead grew restless. They missed the Upper World. I asked Nocturna if the dead might return; and I could rise and govern my subjects in both worlds. We held a council here in my kingdom. Heartlessly Nocturna refused to let the dead—or me—return to the Upper World. She said it was not the way of things.”

Shade felt an uncomfortable pang of sympathy. Wasn’t that his own singular wish in this place: escape? Anyone trapped down here for centuries would be driven practically insane with the urge to return to the living world.

“And so,” Zotz said, “I killed Nocturna.” Shade exhaled raggedly, not knowing whether to believe this. In his heart he’d always harboured a gloomy and guilty instinct that Nocturna had never existed. She was a mistake, just another legend the elders had confused. But now he felt a pulse of jubilation to be proven wrong, even though Zotz claimed he had murdered her. Maybe this explained her mysterious absence from Shade’s world, the fact that she was never seen, never heard, while Zotz was able to sweep over the earth, and guide and strengthen his followers.

“When?” Shade said. “When did this happen?”

“Thousands of years ago. She was vicious in her refusal to liberate me or the dead. So I wrapped myself around her and choked the life from her, and she died. Her body fluttered like a leaf to the ground. But it was in her death that she committed her greatest act of treachery. From the spot where she lay, the Tree grew.” Shade’s heart quickened.

“The Tree grew tall and strong,” hissed Zotz, “until its branches touched the stone heavens. She’d left this living thing behind in my kingdom. Without my consent. It would not die or wither. I could not touch it. I could not even go near it. But the dead who entered the Tree were liberated from my kingdom. Pilgrims began to travel the Underworld and preach that the Tree was a portal to a new world, a world Nocturna had created for them after her death.”

“So she lives?” Shade demanded.

“Somehow she managed to release herself back into the Upper World. But you will
never
see her,” Zotz said, a note of contempt seeping into his voice. “She exists only in little things. Leaves and dust, dewdrops and pebbles. She has no larger body to inhabit. She spreads herself thinly across the entire world. She does not
act. She merely
watches
. And she will contentedly watch both you and your son die. She will not stop it. Your fate has been decided by Nocturna, not me. It is she who has made it necessary for you to die, so Goth and Phoenix might have your lives. Just as it is she who has made the mines necessary by forbidding me any other means of return to the Upper World. Once we were equals. Now I must restore the balance.”

“How?” Shade asked. How was it that even now he wanted to know things? He and his son were at risk of death, yet he could not shut down his mind, or quell the hope that if he heard more, learned more, he might be able to escape.

“I am not as greedy as Nocturna,” Zotz said. “I do not want to destroy or steal her world from her. I merely want to make our two worlds one. I want to break down the barriers and reunite the living and the dead. Is that not just?”

“I don’t know,” said Shade honestly. What would Nocturna say? But she never spoke, anyway, not to him.

Zotz loomed closer with all three enormous heads, nudging Shade’s face and inhaling mightily. Shade winced in revulsion.

“Life,” Zotz intoned. “That’s all I need to rise. Not just one, though. A hundred, in the space of a total eclipse. You must remember, little bat, you were the one who prevented my liberation in the jungle. The tunnel I’m digging here will suck all those lives down to me. But I hope that I do not have to wait so long. When Goth and Phoenix return to the Upper World, they will breed, make followers, and instruct them. And once I have a hundred hearts sacrificed to me I will have the power to break through this stone sky, break through to the Upper World, and kill the sun. And then I will bring the dead with me. Billions upon billions of loyal Vampyrum. Nocturna will no longer be able to thwart me.”

“But without the sun,” Shade croaked, “everything will die. Trees, plants, Humans, animals. All of us.”

“Correct,” said Zotz calmly. “All will be equal in the kingdom of the dead.”

“Then everything will be just like your kingdom now. What would the difference be?”

“The difference is this: I would reign.”

“And Nocturna?”

“You think your god is so superior to me. Does she excel at looking after her creatures? I have saved my faithful from death, healed their wings, guided them, spoken to them, shown my
face
to them! What has yours done for you!”

Shade said nothing, afraid of the doubt and despair coursing through him. How would he ever know what Nocturna had done for him? He had been fortunate: he had escaped fatal danger many times; and yet he had experienced terrible things, too. Was Nocturna responsible for the good, but not the bad? Or simply nothing at all?

“And how would you reign?” Shade couldn’t stop himself asking, tongue heavy.

Zotz smiled, silent for a moment.

“There are many injustices to be corrected. The Humans, who turned away from worshipping me, who have gone on to persecute bats, like yourself. They will be punished. All creatures who have ever been our enemies—the beasts, the owls especially—they too will be made to atone.”

“But we’re at peace with the owls,” Shade said, startled.

“For now,” Zotz replied. “Peace is unpredictable. It is best to ensure peace by annihilating all possibility of war.” The reptilian flesh of Zotz’s three heads wrinkled in amusement. “You think me ruthless. You think me bloodthirsty. I simply do what must be done. Perhaps you are not so different.”

Shade laughed hoarsely.

“Why do you laugh?” Zotz asked sharply. “Have you not killed your own kind?”

“No!” said Shade.

“You are wrong! How many Vampyrum lived in my temple in the jungle!”

“I don’t know …” Shade said, confused.

“Millions!” Zotz roared.

“I did not kill them,” Shade said feverishly.

“You dropped the Human’s explosive disc on the temple.”

“No, one of your followers did! I stopped it.”

“Yes. Just long enough for your friends to escape.” Shade remembered the effort of keeping the heavy disc aloft with just sound, the cannibal bat hurling himself against it, the strain nearly rupturing his mind.

“I couldn’t hold it any longer!” Shade protested.

“Perhaps you didn’t think those million lives were important? That they were all monsters and didn’t deserve a second thought? Or did you enjoy the delirious power of killing your enemies, wiping out an entire species?”

“What could I have done?” Shade demanded.

“You could have caught it, you could at least have deflected its path.”

Could I?
Shade’s mind worked furiously. A million lives. Could he have used sound to shunt the disc hard enough to miss the pyramid? Maybe, maybe. But he’d been desperate for time. Exhausted and weak. The cannibals had tried to kill him, his father, a hundred victims waiting to be sacrificed. Should he even feel guilty? Then he thought of Murk, and felt a flicker of shame.

“You too are a killer in your own way,” Zotz’s heads insisted. “Does that make you good or evil?”

“It was self-preservation,” he said weakly.

“Yes. You admit it, at least. You have killed. And you would again, just as you would have killed Goth now if needed. Survival. Something we all have in common, even a god. That is why we strive. That is why I will no longer let Nocturna persecute me. I will overthrow her if necessary. That upsets you. But ask yourself, Who loves their creatures more, me or Nocturna?”

“Nocturna made everything,” said Shade.

“She helped set creation in motion,” Zotz corrected him. “But that is all. Her role is finished. She
is
creation. But me, I am the stronger. I have killed her. And I have laboured harder. I have made this place into something from nothing. I have sung this world into being, every mote of it, every second of it. For my own creatures, the Vampyrum, I have made a city and jungle beautiful beyond anything they had in the Upper World. Temples and plazas and rainforest which I made for them block by block, vine by vine. For the other dead I have spun their desires. Yes, I want them to stay here in my kingdom. I give them a place of rest, instead of breeding discontent and confusion like the Pilgrims, setting them on another anxious journey, trying to fathom Nocturna’s plan! I have made this place for them with nothing but sound!”

“Sound,” Shade breathed.

“Yes,” said Zotz, heads rearing back proudly. “Before me, this place was merely a void. And I have filled it for my subjects. I
am
the Underworld.”

Shade looked about in amazement. Just sound.

The stone, the wood, the metal. The entire spire that imprisoned him.

Nothing but sound?

It was almost too much to comprehend. Sound—so dense, so convincing that it took shape before his mind’s eye; perfectly solid objects, real as anything he’d ever known. How could this be just sound? “It is persuasive, is it not?” Zotz said. “It is flawless.” “Yes,” Shade muttered, but to himself he said,
Look harder
.

Very slightly he changed the pitch of his sonic spray, sharpening it, forming it into a spike. He aimed at the stone wall, bored into it with sound, and saw the blocks shimmer ever so slightly, like water touched by a breeze. For the first time in hours, he felt hope. Sweat itching the fur of his brow, he bored deeper and harder, sonically chiselling away the mortar around a large block. With a grating scratch, the stone tilted and then fell away.

Startled, Shade opened his eyes and stared. Part of the wall was gone, admitting a flood of starlight. He saw Zotz’s heads rear up on their snaky necks and dart down to the damaged wall, peering in consternation.

Shade flew for the hole. Zotz whirled, three heads, all jaws wide, blocking his path. Shade was going too quickly to stop. He winced, anticipating the collision with lashing tongues and teeth. But the second before contact, Zotz pulled his heads sharply away, and Shade streaked through the hole into open sky.

Starlight rained down on him. He climbed, not understanding what had happened, how he had escaped. It was almost as if Zotz was afraid to touch him. A god, afraid of him? Far in the distance, Shade could make out a hot glow on the curved horizon, licks of fire dancing into the air. At first he thought it was the sun, rising finally, but then he saw that the light tapered into the shape of branches.

The Tree.

Before he could even angle his tail and wings to set course, a
terrible rumbling drew his gaze down. The cathedral’s twin towers flexed and unfurled into massive wings. From the body of the cathedral grew a narrow neck that bulged into an elongated white skull. Cama Zotz in all his might. There was something indescribably ancient about him: his skin like eroded stone and petrified bark, his skull assembled from the oldest bones of the world.

Zotz’s massive head lifted swiftly through the air, arching over Shade and twisting to face him, wingbeats away. Shade braked, dipped, tried to avoid Zotz’s shrieking jaws, but they kept pace with him, stopping him from flying towards the Tree.

Shade remembered how the god had recoiled from him inside the spire. Still, to intentionally hurl himself at this thing was unthinkable. But—

If everything’s sound, Shade thought desperately, maybe he is, too.

Plunging into a dive, Shade aimed himself at the base of Zotz’s throat. Wincing with intense concentration, he sang at the god’s flesh, probing, testing to see if it was real. No, just sound! This gargantuan thing was not the god himself, but some sonic apparition Zotz had spun, like the Underworld itself. With a bark, Shade drove a sonic wedge into Zotz’s neck, trying to cut through the tissue. Deep, deeper. Shade slammed against the neck, dug in with his claws, still singing sound.

Zotz’s flesh began to spark and melt wherever it came into contact with Shade’s body. It was as if Shade were acid to this sonic creature. Zotz thrashed, trying to shake him off, and Shade felt as if he were caught in a typhoon. He was still cutting, not quite finished, but his claws tore loose and he went tumbling back through the air. Spinning, he saw Zotz’s head whistling straight for him, eyes and jaws wide. Shade veered, and Zotz plunged past, head and neck severed from his colossal body.

Even as it fell, Zotz’s head was dissolving like dandelion spore caught by the wind, a billion glimmers of sound raining down towards the winged body of the cathedral, now twitching senselessly.