Silverwing (16 page)

Shade was beginning to wonder if Romulus was crazy after all.

“I’ll stay back here, I promise.”

Shade looked doubtfully at Marina, but for some reason he wasn’t afraid of Romulus anymore. He didn’t understand why the rat wanted to see his wings, but there was an innocent excitement
in his eyes, a burning curiosity, which made Shade trust him.

“All right,” he said. He unfurled his wings.

Romulus stayed where he was, peering intently at the taut leather. “Could you lift them just a … yes, thank you … and now angle them … ah … yes …” he said, grunting to himself, muttering words Shade couldn’t make out. After a few minutes he nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “You can’t know how important this is to me. Maybe if I showed you. Look.”

Now he lay down in the mud and stretched out his arms and legs as far as they would go. Shade gasped. For although this creature was clearly a rat, there were long webs of skin between his arms and hind legs—almost the same leathery material bat wings were made of. More folds of skin stretched between his feet and stubby tail. And, if you looked closely, there were even flaps of membrane between his neck and arms.

“Wings,” Shade breathed in amazement.

“You can see why my brother thinks of me as a freak,” Romulus said. “To him, I’m scarcely a rat at all.”

Shade turned to Marina. “I had a feeling … on the raft I was looking at the guards and I thought, really, with wings, we’d look sort of the same!” And maybe that explained Romulus’s voice too, that strange batlike shriek of his.

“We’re related, I think,” said Romulus. “I think that millions of years back we were the same creature.”

He rustled the taut flaps of skin between his arms and legs. “And I think these are memories, lost secrets that just happened to find their way out in me. I’ve spent a lot of time upside, years of my life studying this.” He stood. “Of course, I could be wrong. It’s just a theory. And not a popular one in my brother’s court, as you might imagine. If he didn’t think I was crazy, I’m sure he’d have drowned me years ago. Being a freak has its benefits, I can assure you.”

Shade was silent for a moment, trying to digest all this. To think they could be related to rats.

“Strange we should now be enemies, isn’t it?” said Romulus.

Shade nodded. “Those big bats you saw. The ones chasing us. They really are from the jungle. They’re the ones who’ve been killing rats. We can’t stop them.”

“Somebody must,” said Romulus, “before they start a war between all the creatures.”

“Might be too late for that,” said Marina. “Anyway, we’ve got enough to worry about. How are we going to get out of here?”

“That,” said Romulus with a grin, “is easily taken care of.”

He shuffled to a wall of his chamber and began to dig through the mud with his front claws, kicking out a pile behind him. After a few minutes he’d exposed a narrow tunnel.

“How else do you think I get upside so frequently?” he said. “Follow this. It should take you to the outskirts of the Humans’ town. You’ll have to crawl, I’m afraid. A little undignified, perhaps, for bats, but a small price to pay for your lives. My brother is not known for his mercy.”

“What will you tell him?” Shade asked.

“I’ll tell him I ate you both, right down to the marrow.”

“Thank you,” said Shade.

“Maybe,” said Romulus, “the three of us will meet again one day, under better circumstances.”

He scrambled after Marina through the airless tunnel, up and up and up, his claws plunging deep into the mud with every step. The tunnel widened and narrowed erratically, twisting into steep spirals. They had to flatten themselves, belly down, inching their bodies forward. Twice they had to dig their way through cave-ins, Shade fearing all the while they would be buried alive. His sound sight was practically useless in such close quarters. He moved like a blind thing, nudging ahead by feel. Every so often the tunnel seemed to run close to others, and he could hear the sound of rat claws on stone and pipe, sometimes muffled voices. He and Marina would freeze, not daring to breathe, waiting for the noises to go away. He was terrified that at any moment rat snouts would burst through the muddy walls, snapping.

Finally, the blackness began to soften and Shade could smell something above the choking stench of mud. Fresh air, just a hint, and then it was quickly overpowered by something else not so pleasant.

“What is that?” Marina asked in disgust.

Eager to get above ground, they sped up anyway, and surfaced inside a huge mound of stinking Human garbage. Shade nearly gagged, not wanting to touch any of it. He made his body as small as possible as he cast around for a way out. He spotted a channel, which Romulus had burrowed through the garbage, and hurriedly scuttled through it.

The night sky opened above them. Shade spread his wings joyfully and lifted up into it. He rose with Marina at his side, and watched with glee as the Human garbage and the mud and rats dropped farther and farther below him. He was rising away from it all, and how wonderful to finally be back in the night, his true element.

“I thought we’d had it down there,” said Marina. “I really couldn’t see a way out.”

“Romulus,” Shade said, turning to Marina, “he was our unexpected ally, wasn’t he? Just like Zephyr said.”

Marina looked at him curiously, then nodded. “Yeah, I think maybe you’re right. Who’d have thought a rat would save our lives?”

Shade could now see the garbage dump, and the Humans’ town off to one side, and then the forests stretching out before them, beckoning. His senses were automatically checking the sky for signs of Goth and Throbb.

“You think they’re still looking for us?” he asked Marina.

“They don’t give up easy, that’s for sure.”

Maybe they’d finally decided to head south on their own. Maybe they’d been run over by one of those Human machines on the road. There was certainly no sign of them now.

The ground was silver with snow, and it was still bitterly cold, but nothing like the mountain peaks. Shade realized how far south they must have traveled now. How many wingbeats, he wondered, and how many more to go?

“Which way?” Marina asked him.

Shade closed his eyes and summoned his mother’s map. He started at the beginning, to make sure he didn’t miss anything. With a lump in his throat he saw Tree Haven disappearing into the distance. The lighthouse, flashing. And then the rocky coastline, and the terrible ocean spreading away into blackness. Then came the city’s dazzling lights, and the cathedral tower, the metal cross, and their guiding star. Ice, and the stone wolf ears in the mountain range. And then this—

Forest sweeping past beneath him. Snaking through the trees was a calm, glassy river. He was flying along the river now, downstream, following its every curve. And then, a sound, a low rumbling, growing, growing.

The river sped up, frothing, leaping—and all the while, this strange roar building. He thought of the sea, the crash of the waves on the shore.

And—

His last image was of this broad torrent crashing between rocky banks, sending up a spray. Then he was plunging toward the water, headfirst it seemed, his stomach lurching.

He tried to explain it to Marina.

“I got the river part,” she said. “But I’m not sure about the last bit. We’re supposed to go into the water? Your colony sure likes riddles, Shade, that’s all I can say.”

“At least we know where we’re headed. Hibernaculum must be somewhere nearby. We’re almost there, Marina. Maybe not more than a couple nights’ flying.”

He felt a surge of strength. They’d come so far. They’d make it after all. He angled his wings and streaked toward the forest, searching for the river.

And then the whole sky suddenly came unstuck and dropped down, pounding all his senses from him.

He woke in darkness, not knowing where he was, or what had happened. His last memory was of being wrapped in the suffocating weight of the night. He blinked. Where was he? There were no stars, no moon. He pricked up his ears, hoping for a silvery picture of the world in his mind’s eye. But from all sides, his echoes bounced back at him hard.

He was trapped in some tiny space, so tight he couldn’t even unfurl his wings.

Suddenly he was aware of a thick, unpleasant smell, and a fast, rhythmic thudding. At first he thought this was his own racing heart. Then, in horror, he realized it was someone else’s heart, very, very close.

All around him, the walls seemed to shudder in time with the beats. It was as if—

He was inside a living thing.

With a terrible calmness, the answer came to him.

You’ve been eaten.

You’re inside the stomach of some huge animal.

Panic exploded through him and he started to struggle against the leathery walls. Let me out, let me out! The walls contracted even tighter, threatening to squeeze the air out of him altogether. He stopped, gasping and sweating.

The walls shuddered and loosened slightly. Fresh air snaked in and Shade breathed hungrily. In the pale light he could now see the walls were made of some kind of leathery material … a bat’s wing.

He cried out as the wing pulled back suddenly and Goth’s huge head loomed over him.

“Nothing broken, I hope.”

“Where’s Marina?” Shade gulped.

He cried out as the wing pulled back suddenly and Goth’s huge head loomed over him.

“Oh, we’ve got her too.”

They were at the back of a shallow cave. Throbb, crouched nearby, slowly unfolded his right wing, and Marina emerged, gasping for air. Shade met her eyes. He crawled warily out from under Goth’s wing, and was sickened by what he saw.

Before, the cannibal bat had only the single black band. But now his forearms, and even his hind legs, were festooned with glimmering silver rings. Throbb too was decorated, though not nearly as lavishly as his companion. Shade now understood the terrible metallic whistling that had followed them through the night skies.

“You killed them, didn’t you,” croaked Shade.

“You led us right to them, really.”

Shade turned to Marina, watching her face. She looked like she was going to be sick. All those bats, all they’d hoped for, gone forever now.

“Don’t worry, we didn’t eat them all,” said Goth. “There’s only so much bat even I can stomach.”

“You’re a monster,” Marina hissed.

“They thought the same,” Goth said. “Kept calling out to the Humans to help them. Seemed to think they were even going to turn
into
Humans. Pathetic. You’re not still waiting for them are you?” he asked her mockingly. “I’d have thought your last encounter with Humans was proof enough they don’t care about you.”

“I wish they’d killed you,” Marina said.

“They nearly did. I ripped the dart out just in time.” He looked at Shade. “I need the rest of your sound map.”

Shade’s throat tightened. “Why?”

“I want to go to Hibernaculum and meet Frieda, and all the other Silverwings.”

“I’ve forgotten the rest.”

“You’re lying.”

“No. We’re lost.”

Goth looked at Throbb and nodded. Throbb opened his jaws and closed them lightly over Marina’s head.

“Tell me how to get there, Shade.”

He looked at Marina, could see a trickle of Throbb’s saliva drip down onto her face. She winced in disgust, breathing fast and shallow. The teeth closed a little more, pressing into her.

“It’s a river!” Shade shouted. “Through the forest. A river, and we’re supposed to follow it.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t. We can’t figure it out. The picture doesn’t make sense.”

Goth stared hard at him. “You’ll have to figure it out, won’t you.”

He nodded.

Goth jerked his head at Throbb. “Let her go for now. Shade has some thinking to do.”

“They’ll fight you,” he said fiercely. “There’re thousands of us there.”

“Show me this river. We’ve wasted enough time.”

Goth and Throbb flanked them tightly, wing tip to wing tip. Shade knew there was no escape. If they tried to bolt, the big bats could overtake them in a second.

It wasn’t long before he heard the soft sound of running water, and he felt sick. He locked onto it and, skimming the trees, brought them out over the river.

“How far is it?” Throbb asked, shivering.

“Maybe two nights, maybe more. I’ll know when we hit the landmark.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Goth hissed at him. “If you’re trying to trick us, think of your friend Marina.”

They flew in silence for an hour, following the curves of the river. His colony. He knew they were close, and his heart ached. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to be warm. He wanted to surrender all his problems. After an hour the horizon started to glow.

“I’m hungry,” Marina said. “We haven’t eaten for a long time.”

It was true, Shade realized. He hadn’t even noticed the yawning pit in his stomach.

Goth looked at them. “Yes, go eat some of your little insects, but stay within sight along the river. We’ll be watching.”

With the two huge bats circling overhead, Shade and Marina
searched joylessly for insect eggs and snow fleas, not daring to speak.

“They’re going to kill us, you know.”

He nodded, remembering Zephyr’s words. Powerful agents were searching for Hibernaculum. But who would get there first?

“As soon as they know how to get there,” Marina said, “they won’t need us anymore. They’ll eat us.”

And what would they do to his colony? Could the Silverwings fight Goth and Throbb? The males would be there. Surely, all together, they could beat the cannibal bats, no matter how powerful they were.

But …

What if Goth and Throbb didn’t come fighting. Coldness seeped through him. What if they came to the colony the same way they’d come to him. Peacefully. Helpfully. What if the Silverwings trusted them, and let them hibernate with them? They’d be eaten in their sleep. One after another, all through the winter. And no one would wake up to notice until it was too late.

“What’s that scar on Throbb’s wing?” he asked Marina.

“Frostbite. I’ve seen it before. A bat got lost in an ice storm for a couple of nights. He lost his whole wing.”

Shade started thinking. “Will that happen to Throbb?”

“Maybe. The tip looks pretty bad. It’ll spread.”

“Goth’ll get it too.”

“He’s a bit bigger, but he can’t take the cold either. Who knows, Shade. It might take weeks.”

“If we take them off course, maybe, keep them in the cold …”

But how long could he risk that before Goth lost his patience, and killed them both? Goth was already suspicious. He didn’t trust him. And how long could he and Marina stand the cold?

Goth plunged down toward them.

“That’s enough,” he said. “We need to find a roost.”

Shade looked away as the two cannibals tore into the finch they’d brought back from their hunt.

They’d found a roost in the small hollow of a dead tree. It was cramped inside, and Goth and Throbb hunched across the opening, blocking it. Shade noticed that Throbb was shivering violently as he ate, rubbing his scabby wing against the rough insides of the tree. The finch’s innards steamed.

“My eating habits still disgust you, I see,” Goth said.

“You eat bats. It’s unnatural.”

“More unnatural than wanting to become Human?”

Throbb laughed harshly as he chewed.

Goth snorted in disgust. “Those banded bats in the mountains, they made a religion of worshipping Humans instead of Zotz.”

Zotz. The name, for some reason, sent a chill through Shade.

“You’ve never heard of him, have you?”

“No.” And he didn’t want to hear.

“Cama Zotz is the bat god. He created us, and everything around us, even this frozen wasteland you call home.”

“No.” Shade shook his head. “Nocturna created us and—”

“Why d’you even bother listening to him?” said Marina angrily. “He’s a liar.”

“Am I? Tell me then. Why would a bat god want his creatures to become something else? Zotz wants us to be powerful as we are. He doesn’t want us to become Human.”

“I don’t even know if I believe that anyway,” Shade said. “Maybe that’s not what Nocturna means for us.”

Goth smiled, and it was the kind of smile a mother gives a very young child.

“Nocturna doesn’t exist.”

Shade felt as if he’d been hit in the stomach.

“Or if she does exist, she’s next to powerless. Look at her creatures. Cowering from everything in the sky and on the ground. Zotz is all-powerful. Look at me!” He flared his mighty wings, bared his teeth, hunched his muscular shoulders. “This is what power is. I fear no creature. I eat them. Rat, owl, bat. Not even the Humans can hurt me.”