He’d been flying hard for hours now without a rest, over a strange landscape of luminous hills and shallow valleys. Earlier, near the shores of the dark river, at the two stone horns, he’d picked up his son’s echo image—and the newborn’s beseeching voice calling to him. At the sight and sound of his son, he’d whispered thank you, over and over again. And to his relief, he had also picked up traces of Luna and Java and the other Pilgrims. It made his mind easier to think they had found each other and were travelling together for the Tree.
Now the cathedral lay directly in his path, and he found himself flapping eagerly towards it. Then he braked. There was something ominous about the sight of this very Human structure in a place without Humans. Who had carved it from the rock face, chiselled its mighty towers? Against the stone he caught a wrinkle of movement, and saw a small bat scuttling across the spire’s base and through an opening beneath one of the gargoyles. Tipping himself into a slow dive, he pumped his wings, gaining speed. He did not want his son in there.
“Griffin!” he shouted, but his son didn’t hear him. He had already disappeared inside.
Shade made a quick circle of the spire—a stone gargoyle crouched motionless at each corner of the base—before coming in to land. He braked, flipped upside down, and grabbed hold of a bony protrusion of stone. Fearfully he gazed up at the gargoyle peering down at him, and his breath jolted. The gargoyle was a Foxwing, and looked disconcertingly like a giant twin of Java. The expression on the frozen face was one of horror. Shade turned away and clambered through the same small opening his son had taken.
“Griffin!”
No answer. Why wasn’t he answering? Inside, the spire was completely dark, windowless. Shade lit it with sound, sweeping for his son. In the centre was a tight weave of wooden beams, huge bulbs of metal suspended on ropes. It was eerie how similar it was to Zephyr’s Spire in the Upper World. Shade half expected to see the old albino bat, smiling benevolently down at him.
“Here I am!”
Hanging from a beam high above him was Griffin, all alone. Shade moaned in relief, flying towards him. He didn’t want to waste any time.
“Griffin, we need to get out of here. Where are the others?”
“Outside. Didn’t you see them?”
“No.”
“You must’ve. The gargoyles.”
His son was smiling in a way that unnerved Shade. The smile didn’t fit his face, seemed too large, all lopsided. Shade’s skin crawled as he remembered the Foxwing gargoyle. And the other three? Yorick … Nemo … Murk … all turned to stone?
“Griffin, what’s going on?” He had almost reached his son, ready to roost beside him.
His son’s body ruptured, fur and flesh exploding into tiny motes of sound and light. At the same time a new, bigger body swelled through the remains of the old, a powerful chest crackling out through Griffin’s small ribs, huge wings unfurling to a three-foot span. Shade reared back in mid-air. Through his son’s face thrust a terrible new face with a long snout, a spiked nose, and a crest of bristly fur atop the skull.
Goth shook free the residue of Griffin’s skin and leered down. Shade knew what he’d just seen was a sonic illusion, and yet the image of his son being torn asunder was so terrible that his eyes and ears skittered desperately around the spire, looking for the remnants—as if he might, if quick enough, gather and mend all those tiny pieces.
He was still stunned when Goth struck, slamming him down to the floor, pinning him on his back. Somehow Goth was heavier now, Shade could tell that at once. How could the dead get heavier and stronger?
“Where is he?” he shouted up at Goth. “Where’s my son?”
“Limping his way towards the Tree. With the other newborn.”
Get out. Get to him. Spraying out desperate echoes, Shade saw that there was only a single exit from the spire: the same tunnel he’d come through. Taking a great inhalation of breath, he aimed at Goth’s chest and let fly a bellow. The blow jerked Goth several inches up into the air, long enough for Shade to flip onto his belly and launch himself. He streaked towards the tunnel exit, pulling in his wings so he could sail right through it.
Like an eyelid snapping shut, the opening sealed itself, and Shade hit the stone, collapsing. Goth’s laughter reverberated painfully in his skull. Again he took to the air, not wanting to be an inert target. He was sealed with Goth inside this spire, though he knew they were not entirely alone. He sensed another presence slithering invisibly through the air, through the stone around him. It could only be Cama Zotz who had cloaked Goth in his son’s form, sealed the opening with such ease. Frantically Shade soared around the spire, searching for exits, searching for Goth. The ceiling began to glow with sonic pictographs: a feathered serpent, a jaguar, a pair of eyes without pupils.
From above, Goth streaked down at him with deadly intent, and Shade peeled off to the right, veering through a skinny gap between wooden beams. That was something he still had, his smallness. He clung beneath a plank, trying to suck air into his nostrils silently, and heard the clatter of Goth’s wings as he wheeled. “I was worried I had lost my chance to feast on you, Shade!”
Shade said nothing, trying to think. His only way out was blocked. He’d been lured here for one brutally simple purpose: to be killed. He pressed himself harder against the wood to stop himself shaking. It wasn’t just him shaking; the wood beneath his claws shivered as if it were a living thing, newly aware of his presence. In alarm, Shade scuttled further along. But everything he touched now seemed bizarrely malleable, like some kind of spongy vegetation.
“But you musn’t think this is simply vengeance,” Goth shouted overhead. “Certainly I’ll enjoy eating you. You’ve been no end of misery to me. But that’s the least of it. It’s not really personal at all.”
Personal to me, Shade thought as he scrambled along. Getting eaten is very personal.
“You’re just unlucky enough to be alive in the world of the dead,” Goth was saying now. “And I need your life to get back to the Upper World so I can serve my god.”
Shade wondered how he could possibly survive this. “You can’t hide forever!” Goth called out. “I never thought you were a coward!”
The beam to which Shade clung suddenly became animate, and an eye and mouth opened in the wood, bulging towards him. With a grunt of surprise, Shade sprang free, and was out in the open again. He felt Goth’s barrage of sound pass over his body, and knew he’d been sighted.
“I’m not the coward!” Shade yelled furiously. “Isn’t this easy for you, being helped by your god. Cloaked by him. Having him trap me here!”
“Ah. But you have life in you! And your own tricks to play. Don’t think I’ve forgotten. Your tricks robbed me of my life and victory, and my god of his dominion over the Upper World!”
Shade sprayed a veil of sound around himself, deflecting Goth’s echoes and making himself temporarily invisible. He couldn’t keep it up for long—the effort was incredibly draining, and he remembered how Zotz had once stripped his invisibility from him like a snakeskin. At any moment, he could be exposed.
Shade flew straight for Goth and felt his fear harden into a grim, terrible resolve. He was being forced to fight. There was no other escape. He sensed a pulse of bloodthirsty anticipation in the air, as if Zotz were watching with greedy interest. What chance did he have against a creature who was already dead?
Almost there. Goth’s head was whipping from side to side, spraying sound. He must have heard Shade’s wingbeats, for he tensed, flaring his wings protectively. Shade rolled past and landed on Goth’s back, digging in with all claws. Roaring with surprise and pain, Goth bucked. Shade held tight. He dragged himself forward. He might not be able to kill this creature, but he could blind it.
He opened his jaws and sank his teeth around the base of Goth’s right ear. No ears, no sound sight. Blind. He’d never done this before, never set out to deliberately maim another creature, but this was survival now. He took another chomp from the can
nibal’s ear. There was no blood, and no taste, just a cold leathery texture of this dead flesh in his mouth. It made him retch, but he would not, could not, stop.
“Enough!”
The voice erupted within the spire, its force sucking the air from Shade’s nostrils and plucking him off Goth’s back. He tumbled down and hit the floor hard. Before he could flex his legs and wings to take flight again, the stone around him flinched and rippled, and a gaunt, reptilian head thrust up, long jaws snapping. Shade recoiled and turned, but a second enormous head burst from the floor to confront him. Again he swerved, and another identical head swelled from the stone wall to leer down at him. Any move Shade made to fly was quickly blocked by one of these three giant heads, swaying over him on their snaky necks.
Shade had only to glance at the black, unblinking eyes to know these grotesque white skulls were some form of Cama Zotz, bizarrely emanating from the stone itself. He tensed, waiting for the hissing jaws to tear him to shreds.
“You are impressive, little bat,” said one of Zotz’s heads.
“Quite a warrior,” said another.
“Making up in resourcefulness what you lack in strength and size,” the third head hissed.
With every word Zotz spoke came the distant but unmistakable sound of bats screaming, and it set Shade’s fur alight with horror. Only death awaited him now, he was sure of it, and he just hoped it would come quickly.
Goth suddenly flew past one of Zotz’s heads and settled on the floor near Shade.
“It will give me great pleasure to soar back into the Upper World with your life,” Goth told him, rearing back, aiming for his neck.
“No!”
The voice was not Shade’s, though it was the same word shrieking in his own mind. It was the voice of Cama Zotz.
“He is not for you, Goth!” hissed one of the god’s heads. “You have not earned him. This little bat has bested you.” Shade saw Goth’s nostrils flare at this criticism.
“Then, let me sacrifice him for you, my Lord.”
“I intend his life for another.”
“Who?” Goth demanded, obviously forgetting himself. But when Zotz’s jaws moved ominously towards him, the Vampyrum bowed his head and murmured, “It is only that I am surprised, my Lord, by this change in your masterful plan.”
Shade watched, even through his own terror, amazed at the sight of Goth fearfully humbling himself. Two of Zotz’s heads were turned towards the Vampyrum now, and Shade stealthily shifted his gaze to the third head, hoping that maybe, in this moment of distraction, he might make a break for it. But Zotz’s third head was directly behind him, only inches away, watching with unblinking eyes.
“There is no escape for you, Silverwing,” the head whispered.
“As you have failed, Goth, my plans have changed. I intend Shade Silverwing’s life for my Chief Builder. You became acquainted with her at the mines, I believe. Her name is Phoenix.”
“She is to have this one’s life—for herself?” Goth said, and Shade could hear the consternation and reproach in his voice.
“That is correct, Goth. I needed you to lure Shade Silverwing to me. Phoenix is travelling here now, to claim his life. She has served me well.”
“Have I not also served you well, my Lord?”
“Indeed you have. It was your plan that has now inspired mine.”
“But now it is Phoenix who will return to the Upper World.” Zotz’s heads smiled in unison, laughed through pointed teeth.
“Phoenix is your equal in every way—perhaps even more relentless. She will accompany you to the Upper World. Should you not have a mate? A means to breed and repopulate the Upper World with my followers?”
Goth bowed his head. “I understand now, Lord Zotz. Thank you. But how am I to rise?”
All three of Zotz’s heads turned to Shade as they spoke.
“The newborn.”
“No!” cried Shade. “Take me!”
“Soon enough,” Zotz said. “This is your final test, Goth. The newborn’s life is yours. Go now. I will provide a favourable wind for you. And a disguise.”
As Shade watched with his echo vision, Goth began to shimmer. His body wizened, his wings shrank, his face collapsed in on itself and began to reform into a smoother, smaller face. A few seconds more and Goth looked exactly like Shade.
“No …” Shade breathed.
“Your son will see you again,” Goth told him.
“Take me, instead!” Shade shouted. His only thought was that the longer Goth remained here, the longer Griffin might have to reach the Tree and make his escape.
“Come on, Goth,” Shade taunted, “how can you turn away from this chance? Isn’t this what you always wanted? The little runt who outsmarted you every time, you gutless idiot! Here’s your chance!”
Shade saw his mirror image hesitate, flanks heaving hungrily.
“No,” Goth said to him. “It will give me greater pleasure to cause you a greater pain.”
“Go,” Zotz commanded, and in the spire’s roof, a hole opened, admitting a blaze of starlight. Goth flew for it. Shade launched himself in pursuit, but one of Zotz’s heads plunged down at him, hissing and snapping, and he had to bank sharply, nearly stalling in mid-air. Circling, he saw Goth, his diabolical double, disappear through the hole in the ceiling. Then the opening sealed itself.
Sobbing, Shade careened around the spire, searching for another way out, a chink in the stone, a rotten plank. Griffin would think it was him. He would see him coming and be so happy, and perhaps fly to meet him. And then … Shade grunted at the image before his mind’s eye. That was the worst: that in his son’s last, confused moment of life he would think his own father was betraying him.
“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.