“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 w
as 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.
Go get Griffin.
But as he turned, Shade saw the four stone gargoyles on the corners of the spire. He faltered. Were the Pilgrims really in there? Quickly he flew to the Foxwing’s statue and roosted. He sang sound against the rock, felt his way into it, deeper, and then delivered a savage sonic blow. The rock cracked, and the gargoyle’s shell split in two. Out tumbled Java, spluttering, her fur covered with dust. Shade didn’t hesitate. He went to Yorick’s gargoyle and then Nemo’s, cracking the giant stone skins that had been cast around them. At Murk’s, he hesitated.
“Leave him!” shouted Yorick. “Let him stay with the rest of his accursed kind.”
Nemo offered no objection. Not even Java spoke.
Shade took a breath. Let free one more of these creatures into the world? Why should he? But with one final volley of sound he blasted at the stone. It cracked into a hundred fissures and fell away like eggshell. Murk leapt free. “Thank you,” said the Vampyrum shakily. “You killed Zotz,” Java said to Shade in awe. “I saw it.” “Can’t kill a god,” panted Shade. “He’ll be back. I have to get Griffin.” “We’re going with you,” said Java.
Shade swirled round and pointed himself towards the horizon—towards the Tree’s fierce glow. He would fly faster than he’d ever flown before, and he would reach his son in time.
THE TREE
They heard the Tree before they saw it, a high, keening song that sent a strange vibration through every sinew of Griffin’s body. It was the sound of wind shrieking through branches, rain battering leaves, the dawn chorus of a thousand birds—something primal and urgent. It might have been frightening had it not been fiercely beautiful at the same time, like the sound of the whole world combined and amplified. It was a homing signal, undeniably beckoning. “It’s the same,” Luna said beside him.
Griffin nodded, knowing what she meant. It was a more intense version of the sound his own glow made whenever it separated from his body.
The sound of life.
The Tree itself was still blocked from view by endless ranges of high hills. Always they could see its glow in the distant sky, and occasionally they’d catch a glimpse of fiery tendrils licking up towards the stars.
The song drew them on. Griffin’s flying was slow and laboured now. He was losing strength in his right wing, and had to compensate with his left, lurching through the sky and squandering his vanishing energy just to sail on a straight course. Luna was even worse off, wincing with every stroke, breath ragged. The wounds on her wings looked as if they’d been scorched anew. “You okay?” he asked her.
She nodded, too tired to voice a reply.
“We’re almost there,” he croaked. He’d been saying that for the past couple hours, trying to keep her spirits up, but was beginning to wonder if they would ever really reach the Tree, or if it was some kind of tortuous mirage. Not what you thought, and never even there. Was it just him or was it getting hotter, and was the air thicker here, harder to flap through?
Up and up he struggled along the slope of yet another steep hill, over the crest, and there he faltered, banking into a tight spiral, squinting against the sudden glare of sound and heat.
The Tree was even more enormous than Griffin had imagined. From Frieda’s sound map it had looked huge, and he had visualized the tallest fir in the northern forest. But this Tree towered up from the deep valley floor, its trunk as thick as a hundred trees, stretching over a thousand feet into the air. Its network of undulating branches soared higher than the gaunt mountains that enclosed the valley, and spanned the sky. Every inch of the Tree’s surface was coated in flame, lapping hungrily at the air. There was no smoke, though. The fire wasn’t consuming the Tree; the fire was the Tree.
“Doesn’t look too welcoming, does it,” Griffin said, attempting a laugh.
Luna said nothing. She was circling alongside him, the light from the Tree flashing in her eyes with each turn.
Griffin looked up along the colossal trunk.
“There!” he said. “That’s the way inside!” Halfway up was a knothole. It must have been a huge opening, but in relation to the Tree it looked no bigger than the secret entrance to his nursery roost, just wide enough for Silverwings. The opening shimmered darkly, and he caught the flicker of stars before they faded into the liquidy blackness again. All around the knothole, fire roared. “Ready?” he said. Luna could only stare. Griffin frowned. “Luna?” “It hurts,” she said, “the scars.”
Her wings were twitching so badly she staggered through the air.
“I remember now,” she said. “The fire. The way it burned me. It really, really hurt, Griffin. I’m not going in there!”
He looked at the wall of liquid flame, and the small black opening in its middle, and felt himself quail. What if Dante were right: merely a place of final death? But Frieda had said the opposite. The sound of the Tree was the sound of his own life. It had to be the way. “I can’t,” Luna choked. “It’s okay,” he told her gently. “It’s hot, can’t you feel it? It’s gonna burn us up!” Her terror was so palpable it was like a third winged creature flapping around them.
“It’s not going to burn us up,” he promised. “It’s where we’re supposed to go.” “You go, then!”
“Listen,” he said, forcing her to look straight into his eyes. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
She gave a startled snort. “We fly close and get incinerated. We die, not like I am now, but even worse. So dead we can’t see or hear or talk. Just feel pain. Forever and ever.”
“That’s bad,” he agreed. “But you know what? I don’t think it’s going to be like that. I bet it’ll be … the best that could happen.” He didn’t know how he was able to say this, or even if he believed it. But he believed he had to say it, to speak it aloud and hope the words themselves would set something in motion. “Don’t look at it,” he told her. “Just close your eyes.”
“I see it in my head, anyway.”
“Close your ears too, then. Pin them flat. Just keep your wingtip touching mine and I’ll lead you there, okay?”
After a moment she nodded. “I’ll try. Just do it for me, okay, Griff? Get me there.”
He felt pain and weakness sweeping through his body. But very little fear, he realized with a start. Luna was so much more fr
ightened than him, somehow his own fear had dwindled, neglected and forgotten as he’d tried to comfort her.
“It’s not so far now,” he told her.
Leading Luna with his wingtip, nudging her along when she faltered, he lumbered down into the deep valley towards the Tree.
A powerful headwind kicked up, and Shade was barely able to avoid being blown backwards. Java and the others fared no better. The air whistled in his ears, carrying with it a trace of mocking laughter: Zotz, wasting his time, making him too late. Desperately Shade climbed and dipped, trying to find a less turbulent passage—and couldn’t help thinking of Marina, the way she’d shown him how to find favourable slipstreams as they flew from her island back to the mainland. A lifetime ago. But now, wherever Shade tried, the wind was relentless.
But it wasn’t wind at all, he realized suddenly. Just waves of sound whipped up by Zotz. If he could crack sonic stone, and the neck of a god, surely he could tunnel through the wind.
“Get behind me!” he shouted to the others, “and stay in a single line.”
He listened to the wind, watched it in his mind’s eye, and then spun out a sharp wedge of sound before him. The leading edge pierced the gale, sent it spraying over and under him, creating a tunnel of placid air. Shade surged ahead on the resulting slipstream, ploughing the wind away from him as he flew.
A whoop of glee rose up from Java. “Whatever you did, I like it!”
Shade blasted over the landscape, towards a range of hills backlit by the intense glow of the Tree. Not much further he told himself, hardly any distance at all, a few thousand more wingbeats.
He felt the rumbling as much as heard it, and looked down to see the earth roiling up into a huge wave, keeping pace with them as they sailed overhead. A crested skull broke the surface, cutting a massive furrow of stone and mud. “Is that him?” shrieked Yorick from behind.
Yep, Shade thought, but all his energy was still funnelled into pushing sound. Below, Zotz was outstripping them, moving past them into the range of hills where his massive bulk suddenly disappeared. For a moment all was still. The tremor in the air subsided. Shade counted seconds. They were nearing the foothills now, and angling their path for the summit.