Sunwing (17 page)

“By yourselves, no, I would agree,” said the rat, Harbinger, speaking for the first time. “But we may be able to enlist some help. If there are indeed rats held prisoner by the cannibals, perhaps General Cortez would provide some assistance?”

Ariel nodded. “He lost his own son, he said. If he thought he might get him back … “

“Yes,” said Harbinger, “I will propose it to him at once.”

“Thank you,” said Ariel as the rat emissary and his guards slipped down into the tunnel.

Shade turned to Marina. “You don’t have to come, you know. I’d understand.”

She just laughed. “And have you get all the glory for saving the sun? Nice try, Shade. Besides, you’d only mess it up on your own. You need me more than you think.”

“I know,” said Shade with a grateful smile.

With a hesitant claw, Ishmael scratched a picture in the sandy floor of Statue Haven. Shade watched as Goth’s pyramid took shape: the stepped sides; the narrow, flat-roofed summit.

“It might’ve been as much as two hundred feet high,” Ishmael said. “Hard to tell, it was so covered by the jungle, and I was only half-conscious when they brought me in.”

“Yes, we know of this place,” said General Cortez, eyes fixed on the drawing. “The Humans built it centuries ago, and the Vampyrum made it their home after they abandoned it. I know of no rat who has been inside and returned.”

Shade studied General Cortez’s face, trying to guess what he was thinking. His expression was unreadable. They were lucky he was here at all, Shade knew. Harbinger had returned to his stronghold and managed to convince Cortez to meet with them. The general’s dislike of bats was obvious. His nostrils wrinkled frequently at the sight of them, and he rarely made eye contact when speaking. But he’d come, and Shade was determined to convince him to help.

“The entrance,” Cortez said, prompting Ishmael. Ishmael’s claw hovered over the drawing. “I think they brought
me in here.” He made a mark, and then brushed it away. “No. Here, lower down. It was a big entrance, big enough for Humans. I didn’t notice any others.”

“Guards?”

Ishmael nodded. “Lots. All around the entrance, hanging from the top and sides.”

Cortez grunted. “And where did they take you?”

Ishmael shut his eyes, thinking. “The passage sloped down, steeply, yes. That’s where most of them seemed to roost; I’d never seen so many bats in one place. Then we passed another passage, stairs spiraling upward, but we kept going down until it opened out into a big chamber.”

Clumsily he sketched out a long, narrow space quite near the base of the pyramid. “There were bones,” said Ishmael tightly.

Shade felt his heart battering his ribs.

“Bones?” said Cortez.

“On the floor. From all sorts of birds and beasts. The chamber was lined with stone mounds; big, rectangular mounds. That’s where they kept us. There was a door—”

“Where?” said Cortez.

“In the side of the stone mound. They all had doors. They were round, stone. There was a stick they used to roll one open. It ran in grooves, top and bottom. It took two of them to do it. They pushed me inside with the others.”

“But you say there were other creatures there.”

“Owls I certainly heard, I could smell them—”

“And rats?”

“Yes, in one of those other stone mounds.”

“Be certain of this,” growled Cortez. “As certain as I can be.”

Shade watched tensely, knowing that Cortez was only interested in helping if there was some chance his son was still alive, and could be rescued.

Cortez studied the drawing, silent. “This chamber, there was only the one way in and out?” He pointed at the sloping passage Ishmael had drawn.

“That I saw,” the bat replied.

Shade admired his stamina, and his patience. Cortez’s curt manner made him bristle with dislike. Couldn’t he imagine what Ishmael had been through? To be hauled off in the claws of one of those giant bats, knowing that you were about to die—it was amazing you could see or hear anything at all. Shade just hoped Ishmael’s recollections were accurate.

“And when they took you out,” Cortez began again, “where did they take you?”

“Back the way I came, but then up.”

“The stairs you mentioned?”

Ishmael nodded, sketching a zigzag from the central tunnel up to the pyramid’s summit. “How do you know?”

“I saw the stars through a round portal in the ceiling. This is where they do the killing.”

“Back in the prison chamber,” said Cortez, “were there guards, I mean outside these mounds where you were kept?”

“I don’t know. I heard nothing. Why would they keep guard? There was no escape. The mounds are sealed with stone roofs so heavy, it’d take a dozen Humans to lift one. Thick stone—top, bottom, and sides. We dug our claws down to nothing, just to scratch at it.”

“They’re fearless, these creatures,” said Cortez. “The vulture is about the only bird they would shirk attacking.”

Shade remembered the huge, ungainly bird Caliban had pointed out to him from a distance one night. It wasn’t a fast flyer, but if it got its claws or its hooked beak into you, only death could follow.

“No,” said Caliban, looking up from the map for the first time. “An attack is out of the question. Even with a huge force, the losses to us would be terrible.”

Shade was unable to contain his disappointment. “What if we went to the owls too?” he said.

“The owls?” Cortez replied, turning his pale, piercing eyes on him.

“They must’ve lost plenty of their own kind, just like us. Maybe if we talked to them, they’d agree to help us attack.”

“The owls are no friends of ours, or yours,” said Cortez with icy contempt. “It would be a fatal mistake to think otherwise.”

“Can’t we even try to—”

“I say it again: There is nothing to be gained,” Cortez said sternly. “We have heard rumblings of the war the owls intend to wage against you in the north. There will be no alliance.”

Shade shut his mouth angrily; there was no point arguing. He looked hopelessly from his mother to Marina. If they had no help from the rats, could they even attempt a rescue?

“An attack is suicide,” Cortez said, “but there may be another way.” He turned to the chief guard, who had accompanied him. “Can we tunnel? Here?”

Surprised, Shade watched Cortez make a mark on the map.

“Very likely, sir.” The rat darted his nose down at the base of the fortress. “The fortress walls and foundation are bound to have cracked and settled enough for us to find passage. Assuming, of course, this chamber really does lie so close to the outer wall. Yes, I think we can tunnel in from underneath.”

Shade’s whole body was tensed with anticipation. He forced himself to breathe.

Cortez considered the map a moment before he spoke. “Here is what I am willing to do. There is no point leading a frontal attack on the fortress. But if we can tunnel into the chamber, and it is unguarded, as we hope, perhaps we can release the prisoners and take them out through the tunnel.”

“Thank you,” Shade said.

Cortez lifted his nose in the air to silence him. “But if we encounter heavy opposition there, we may have to retreat. It will be my decision. Understood? We go to free my friends, and yours. That is all. Our force must be small. The more we take in, the greater our chances of being seen or heard.”

“I’m going,” said Shade.

“Me,” said Ariel.

“And me,” said Marina.

“I’m coming too.” It was Ishmael, his eyes blazing. “You’re in no condition,” said Caliban.

“I left my brother there,” said the other bat. “I’m coming. You need me, anyway. I’m the only one who’s been inside.”

“Thank you, Ishmael,” Shade said. He looked at Caliban, gouging a claw into the sand, eyes averted.

“Cassiel would’ve come back for us,” the mastiff said quietly. “I’ll go back for him.”

“We’ll leave at noon,” said Cortez. “They will be roosting, and our chances at surprise are greatest then. No one’s ever attempted to enter their pyramid. They will certainly not be expecting us. Even so, once we enter, and their cries ring out, we won’t have much time before all their might comes crashing down against us. We must be quick.”

Goth circled above the pyramid with Voxzaco as the sun broke from the horizon. He laughed with delight when he saw it, wizened to half its size.

“It will be eclipsed at the height of day,” said Voxzaco. “You have enough offerings I trust?”

“One hundred and ten,” Goth said. A few hours ago he had gone himself to the bone room to count them, just to make sure. How the northern bats had cowered when he’d thrust his head inside! But he was disappointed not to see Shade among them. For a moment he was sure he’d spotted him, but when he’d gone closer, pinning the bat to the ground so he could examine him, he’d seen that he was an older Silverwing, banded by Humans. Not Shade, but with a startling likeness. He frowned. In his dream, he’d ripped Shade’s heart from his chest and eaten it while the runty bat watched. Maybe it wasn’t important now.

What was important was that they offer Zotz one hundred hearts before the eclipse passed, or the sun would live on. But he knew he would succeed.

“Let us prepare for Zotz’s coming,” he told Voxzaco, and flew back to the temple to sharpen his claws for the sacrifices.

After three hours beneath the earth, Cortez called a halt. Shade, grateful for the rest, sank down on the tunnel floor. Crawling was not particularly easy for any bat, but the rats’ underground system was the safest way to travel unseen into the depths of the jungle. The tunnels themselves were low and narrow, wide enough for a single rat, or maybe two bats tight abreast. Shade hated the airlessness, the discomfort and frustration of keeping his wings tightly folded when he wanted so badly to spread them and soar. His claws and forearms ached from the strain of walking on them.

Their group was small. Beside him was Marina, and behind his mother, Caliban and Ishmael. Harbinger had insisted on coming too. In the vanguard, and bringing up the rear, were General Cortez’s guards, and his best tunnelers.

“This is as near as we come,” whispered the chief tunneler up ahead. He lifted his front claw toward the ceiling. “Up there is the pyramid.”

It was as if Shade could suddenly feel its massive weight on
his own back, crushing him. All that stone towering up into the jungle, and within, thousands of Vampyrum. “Begin,” said Cortez.

A small team of tunnelers squeezed past Shade and Marina and immediately went to work on the wall and roof. Shade was amazed at their speed and efficiency as they shunted the dirt from the new tunnel from rat to rat, stowing it farther on in the primary tunnel so as not to block their retreat.

As quick as they were, Shade felt every beat of his anxious heart as lost time. The sun, as they’d set out from Statue Haven, had looked even more wizened, a huge crescent bitten from its side, as if by some huge set of jaws.

The tunnelers were already disappearing up their new hole, dirt flying down behind them.

“Be ready,” Cortez hissed to them all.

Shade met Marina’s eyes, and they stared at each other. He reached over and stroked her with his folded wing. And suddenly he was afraid in a way he’d never been before: He wished she weren’t here, not her, not his mother. It was one thing for him to act alone, to try to save his father, save the sun, but now everyone he cared about was right here, and they could be destroyed along with him.

Panic galloped through him. What if this thing were all wrong, a big mistake? He’d been wrong before. Look at the Human building! Maybe now he was just leading them all into harm’s way, like Chinook. Was it really Zephyr’s voice he’d heard up high? Was he sure? All this about the sun, what sense did any of it make, really?

He opened his mouth to speak, and felt how dry it was. Could she see the panic in his eyes? “We’re together,” she said softly. “That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“We move,” Cortez said.

Immediately, Shade was on his feet, grateful to think no more. He followed Cortez into the tunnel. It was even narrower than the one they’d left behind, winding tightly among huge blocks of stone, jarred apart over the centuries to allow them passage. He caught himself panting for breath.

The passage was angling steeply now, and as Shade clawed his way upward, a tremor of sound passed through the earth beneath his talons. Dust misted the air, and he paused, trying to suppress a cough. There again, a second tremor, and then almost a breeze moving from behind, rustling the fur of his eartips. “You hear that?” he whispered over his shoulder to Marina. “No,” she said, then more worriedly, “what?”

“No talking,” came the general’s angry voice from up ahead.

Still Shade felt it, these vibrations of the air and earth around him. They were so faint, he could easily have missed them, little sonic eddies caressing his fur, slithering past him along the muddy walls and sketching quick pictures in his mind’s eye. A long snake with feathers. A two-headed jaguar …

His heart galloped. These he’d seen before, in his dreams.

And suddenly before him he saw two eyes opening, twin black slashes in the darkness. Shade grunted in shock, shooting out sound. But there was nothing there. Seeing things now. Stop it.

But the tunnel trembled again, and this time everyone felt it. “It’s the weight of the stone,” he heard one of the tunnelers hiss. “I don’t like it. The soil’s soft here.”

But Shade knew it wasn’t just the weight above them; there was something in the tunnel
with
them, something that could seep through rock and earth and air. “How long will it hold?” Cortez asked.

“Long enough for us to do our work,” said the chief tunneler, “but let’s be quick about it.”

From up ahead Shade heard a dull
clunk
of stone on stone. “We’re through …,” the chief tunneler was saying above him, “but … I don’t understand …” There was a short, sickening silence. “Some kind of burial ground … “

Following after General Cortez, Shade squeezed between two huge stones and was suddenly out of the tunnel.

Bones.

The tunnel had brought them out into a sea of bones. Shuddering with disgust, Shade fought his way up through the loose jumble after the others. A rat thighbone knocked against his wing, and a bat’s skull thumped him in the back. There were feathers everywhere, severed batwings, patches of mummified fur.

He reached the surface, slipping and lurching as it shifted beneath him, then turned his attention to helping Marina and the others up. Within a minute they were all assembled in a tight group, perched precariously atop the floor of bones. “Is this the place?” Cortez asked Ishmael.

Shade turned to look at Ishmael and saw he was trembling so hard, his legs almost buckled. He gave a quick, violent nod, mute with horror.

The entire floor of the long chamber was buried under bones, a testament to centuries of feeding. The stink of putrification was intense. The bones at the surface still had a slick sheen to them, some muscle and sinew still clinging. Shade felt a spasm of fear. His father’s bones, somewhere here, buried in all this?

He tore his gaze away from the bones and swept the narrow chamber with sound. They seemed to be at its far end. Running down both walls were the rectangular stone mounds Ishmael had described, maybe a dozen in each row, the closest no more than
ten feet away. Their outsides were ornate, studded with jewels and carved with figures that, with a shudder, Shade recognized all too well: a feathered serpent, a black jaguar. He let his gaze move higher, and almost cried out in shock. The walls were made of skulls.

They were human skulls this time, stacked one atop the other up to the very ceiling. With his echo vision, Shade saw their eye sockets flare black, their jaws wide as if to shout: Intruder! We see you! We hear you!

Cortez was giving orders.

“This tunnel,” he said, nodding to the shaft they’d just ascended, “is our life. If we lose it, we lose our retreat. I want it well guarded.” He nodded at two of his guards. “Mark this spot, keep it clear, and be ready when we return.”

“Yes, General.”

“I want two airborne guards to fly to the end of the chamber and keep watch. You, and you.” He nodded at Ariel and Caliban.

Shade looked at his mother in alarm. The idea of being separated from her …

“No arguments,” said Cortez. “I need two bats who can do what I ask. Ishmael’s too weak, and the young ones”—his eyes swept from Marina to Shade—”I don’t trust. Too willful.” He looked back at Ariel and Caliban. You’re our advance alarm. You see or hear anything approaching the chamber, you let us know.”

“It’s all right,” Ariel whispered to Shade, “I’ll be back. Please, do what he tells you.”

“Okay,” said Shade, watching her rise in the air and fly off on silent wings toward the chamber’s far end. Cortez was talking to Ishmael now.

“Do you remember which mounds the bats and rats were in?” The bat shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Very well.” Cortez looked at Shade and Marina. “Take flight with Ishmael and stay above us as we move. Be my eyes, the three of you. Probe the darkest corners. You see anything move, I want to know. We’ll check each mound in turn. Advance.”

Shade was grateful to open his wings and lift clear of the bones. He stayed close to Marina and Ishmael as they circled above the rats. Cortez and his guards seemed to have less trouble on the bones than he did; quick and agile, they leaped from spot to spot, heading for the first stone mound.

Shade skimmed over it, ears pricked. A mournful warble passed through the stone lid. He veered back to Cortez.

“Owls in that one,” he said.

“I can smell them,” said one of the guards, face crumpling in disgust.

“Move on,” said Cortez without hesitation. Shade considered saying something, but Cortez fixed him with a hard look. He pictured Orestes being dragged through the sky by the jungle bat. It seemed too cruel to let him die when they could save him just like the others. “Move on, Silverwing,” said Cortez. “We have little time.” Up ahead, one of the rat guards called out excitedly, “I can hear them!”

Crossing the chamber and dropping lower, Shade could now hear it too, the muffled squeak of rat language emanating from within the stone mound. On the far side of the mound, Shade found the blocked portal Ishmael had described.

“Over here,” he called out, settling beside it with Marina. The rats reached them within moments. The door was a crudely chiseled round stone, hugely thick. It was slotted into grooved ledges above and below, and there was a narrow hole in the very center through which funneled the sound of rats.

Standing on his hind legs, General Cortez pressed his face against the hole and said, “We’ve come to free you. Be silent.”

“There should be a stick,” Ishmael was saying, “to open it.” Shade scoured the bone-strewn floor, looking for a stick narrow enough to fit into the hole.

“Is that it?” asked Marina. Shade turned and followed her gaze high up the wall to the racks of Human skulls. Balanced atop a row of skeletal teeth was a long, stout stick.

“We’ll get it,” said Marina, and she was flying, Shade right behind her. He didn’t like being so close to the skulls, and felt that same uneasy premonition he had earlier—that there was a presence in this room, watching over them. He and Marina grabbed opposite ends of the stick in their claws and awkwardly flew it down to the stone mound.

Cortez and his rats took hold of it and slotted it into the round stone.

“Roll it,” the General grunted, and four rats lined up on their rear legs, pushing with all their might. The stone remained fixed for several long seconds, and then with a low rumble began to turn. It quickened as it gained momentum, and within seconds the opening was clear.

Wasting no time, rats surged out, their eyes wild with disbelief. There were dozens of them, mostly young or old, easy victims for the jungle bats, though there were a few strong soldiers clearly weakened by their ordeal. General Cortez stood tall, eyes flicking from one rat to the next, searching. Then Shade saw his whole face lift, and he dropped to all fours and surged through the crowd.

“My son,” said Cortez, pushing his face against the young male’s.

Shade stared, transfixed, and desperately wanted this moment for himself.

When the last of the rats had left the mound, Cortez wasted no time. He turned to two of his guards. “Escort them back to the tunnel now.” Then to Shade and Marina, he said, “Now let us find your friends so we can leave this blighted place.”

Up in the air again, Shade cut wide arcs across the chamber’s width, ears flared and swiveling for bat song.

“That one, I think,” Ishmael said beside him, tilting his chin. Shade swung down toward the mound, but even as he grazed its roof, he couldn’t hear even the faintest of squeaks.

“Yes,” said Ishmael, “I’m sure this is it.”

“Find the door,” said Marina.

The door was around the far side, but the stone was already rolled fully back, revealing the opening. “Can’t be it,” said Shade, landing.

“No,” whispered Ishmael in horror, “this is it. I remember the markings above the door.”

With mounting panic, Shade stuck his head through the opening. He called out sound and saw that the chamber was indeed empty. But his nose told him more. He could smell the warmth of the bats, and the gouged and bloodied stone walls still echoed with their cries.

Frantically, Shade backed out of the mound, knocking into Marina in his haste. “They were just here!”

Ishmael was still aloft, unable to bring himself any closer to his former prison. “They must’ve already taken them up,” he said. The rest hung in the air, unsaid. Up to the temple, up for sacrifice.

“What is it?” General Cortez asked, catching up to them and frowning at the already open door.

“Too late,” Shade wheezed. “We’re too late. We’ve got to go after them!”

“No,” said Cortez, “that’s impossible.”

“You got your son back!” Shade said. “Let me get my father back.”

For a moment the general looked as if he might falter, but his face hardened almost instantly. “Remember what I said before. We will not launch an attack. You’ve done all you can. It’s too late for them now. I’m sorry, but we make our retreat now! Go and tell Caliban and your mother. We’re leaving.”

A low, subterranean rumble shook the chamber, making all the bones on the floor clatter together horrifically. Dirt rained down from the ceiling, and then a slow sigh passed through the air, rustling Shade’s fur.

“What was that?” said Marina, lifting warily from the ground.

“Earthquake,” said Cortez. “Hurry, we’re retreating.” But Shade knew this was no simple earthquake. The presence he’d felt with them all along was making itself known. He looked up into the darkness of the high chamber and thought he saw a pair of eyes open and then close, disappearing into blackness.

Two guard rats, fur matted with dirt, faces streaked with blood, limped toward them, gasping.

“General, the tunnel!”

“Collapsed,” croaked the other rat. “I don’t know what happened. There was a noise, like rolling water, and then the roof was caving in and there was nothing we could do. We lost the tunnel mouth completely. Three were buried alive when it went.”

“Did any get through?” Cortez asked quickly.