Marina swung the splintered bone up just in time, and the jungle bat impaled itself on the spike, toppling onto her. Its jaws were still snapping convulsively, and Marina wrenched herself clear before the teeth sank into her wing.
“We have the tunnel!”
The voice carried through the bones. Cortez, not far away; just a few more minutes and she’d catch up.
“We have the tunnel! Retreat!”
But where was Shade?
Shade heard Cortez call for the retreat, and he faltered, choking for breath. Retreat. Leave his father, mother. And what about the sun? Had they saved the sun, at least?
“Retreat!” Caliban hissed over his shoulder. “Come on, Silverwing, you’ve done all you can!”
Suddenly Ishmael was beside him. “Are you going?” Ishmael said.
“No.”
“Me neither. I won’t leave my brother again.”
“Can we get to the top?”
“There’re fissures in the stone, I know them,” said Ishmael. “That’s how I lived. But we need to get to the spiral steps first.”
“You lead the way, I’ll make sure we get there.”
“How?”
“Sound. I’ll make us invisible. Don’t ask me how, just fly.” They locked eyes, and broke the surface of the sea of bones, wings open, beating hard.
The scene was still one of indescribable chaos, owls and bats clashing in midair, loose feathers swirling into a dense fog. “Stay close,” he told Ishmael.
Around them he sang out a shroud of darkness, a slippery weave of sound that deflected other bats’ echoes. He and Ishmael were as good as invisible. It wasn’t perfect: Sound leaked out through the seams of his frail shell, but in the chaos it was enough for them to veer through the aerial battlefield almost completely unnoticed.
Up and up they darted to the top of the chamber, and then skimmed along the ceiling, Shade’s wingtips grazing stone. Cannibal bats streamed past them into the chamber, and Shade saw a few owls fighting their way valiantly down the long tunnel that would take them back to the jungle. He hoped fervently they made it.
Virtually all his energy, though, was concentrated on his cloak of invisibility, and he had almost no time to breathe.
“Here,” said Ishmael.
They’d reached a set of steps spiraling steeply up, but their path was almost instantly blocked by more cannibals flooding down.
“This way now,” Ishmael said, and led them hurtling toward the wall. Shade followed, wincing as he wedged himself into a narrow fissure between stones.
Shade exhaled, and his shroud of invisibility melted away.
“Follow,” said Ishmael.
The crevice was rib-crushingly narrow, and Shade slithered through on his belly, up and up after Ishmael. Tendrils of daylight filtered down through these cracks, and he realized they must be getting close to the top of the pyramid.
“Here, here,” Ishmael whispered.
The passage suddenly swelled open, and before him were two round holes through which poured dim daylight. After the darkness it was almost blinding, but his heart surged. The sun was still there. Not dead. Not eclipsed. Not yet.
He saw he was perched on a white chalky material, not stone, and with a start realized he was inside a Human skull. The holes were eye sockets, and below him were clenched teeth.
He moved his head to the eye socket and peered out.
What he first saw was a circular opening in the high ceiling, and dead center was the sun, or what was left of it. He could almost see it shriveling, being eaten up by darkness. So blighted was it, he scarcely needed to look away, though he felt he must. It was like looking at something dying, and it terrified him.
The chamber was rectangular. Feeble light played on the images carved into the stone walls. He was not at all surprised to see the feathered serpent, the jaguar, the two-headed mantis. And in each corner of the room, the slash of an eye, watching.
He looked down. Directly beneath the circular portal was a vast stone disc, its surface covered with dozens of northern bats, their wings stretched and pinned flat by the cannibals. Clustered around the Stone were more bats, gripped by guards.
“My brother,” he heard Ishmael whisper beside him, “I see him!”
Shade’s eyes skittered across the splayed bats, ready for sacrifice. Where’s Chinook, where’s Ariel? Where’s my father? But he had no more time to look, because Goth soared low over the stone.
Shade recognized him instantly, the black band on his forearm, the cut of his wings, the crest of fur atop his massive skull. Another bat flew alongside him, a much older one with a crooked spine, and he seemed concerned with the sun through the portal. “Let us begin!” roared Goth
“Not yet,” said the other. “We must wait until the sun is fully extinguished. You remember Zotz’s words. One hundred within the darkness of the eclipse. To begin now would waste precious hearts!”
“Have they captured the intruders yet?” Goth shouted at a guard who had just flown up into the chamber from the spiraling steps in the floor.
“Not yet, King Goth. But we will have them all before long.”
“If we are but one short of a hundred, you will make up for the lost offering! Bring me owls and rats now! We are about to begin!”
One hundred victims, and Zotz would be unlocked from the Underworld. Shade looked anxiously back at the sun. It was a mere sliver now, a hanging filament of light. He saw the sky darken, flocks of birds tearing back to their roosts in horror at this premature night. How long was the eclipse? If he could delay the sacrifices somehow … The sun went out.
He was unprepared for this moment of total darkness. The sky was hazy; there were no stars, no moon. His eyes may as well have been plucked from his head.
In the darkness there was only sound to see by. He shut his eyes tight. He spun out a web of echoes, and the chamber painted itself silver in his head.
Goth’s voice filled the humid air.
“To you, Zotz, I make this first offering, to give you the strength to enter our world and reign forever in darkness.”
There was no scream, just a terrible bone-rending rip. It had begun.
And Shade knew that now, in the total darkness, was his only chance.
SOUNDSHIFTER
He became a vulture.
Shade cleared his mind and hammered himself a new body out of sound. Feathered wings soared from his swollen chest, his neck lengthened, and his face became a vulture’s face with small vicious eyes and a short, wickedly sharp beak.
Huge, he flung himself into the chamber, every vocal chord spinning out the illusion over and over. His bat smell he couldn’t cloak. A good sniff would give him away instantly, but who would come close enough? And as long as there was no light, no one could see him for what he truly was: a scared, runty Silverwing.
He swung over the chamber, his sonic wings over six feet across, and beneath him, panic broke out among the cannibal guards. He felt half-crazed, invincible. He was a vulture. He flew at the jungle bats, beak gaping. He saw things only dimly, a smear of sound in his mind’s eye. He had few echoes to spare for his own vision, and so was half-blind as he careened through the chamber.
There: a cannibal guard recoiling in horror, stumbling back from his captive.
Over there: a suddenly freed northern bat wasting no time flying high, flying for the circular portal. Out, he was out, he had made it!
And there: Goth, swirling tightly in the air, stabbing sound down at him, this giant vulture.
“We are losing time!” he heard a jungle bat shout in anger. “Continue the sacrifices or we will lose the eclipse!”
Shade flew lower, strafing the cannibals around the huge circular stone, trying to scare off as many as possible. The whole chamber was winged chaos now, as bats—cannibals and northerners—churned the air in terror.
Fly! Shade screamed inwardly. All of you, fly now! Chinook, Mother, Father! “It’s sound! Just sound!”
The enrag
ed bellow reverberated through the room, and he recognized Goth’s voice at once.
“There is no vulture! A trickster is in our midst! Guards, stay on the Stone! Hold your offerings!”
Where was Goth? Shade wheeled in alarm, trying to lock on to him, and in his panic, his vulture was decaying in midair, the left wing molting and drooping pathetically, his claws crumbling like a rotting corpse.
Goth dove down on him, aiming for the vulture’s neck, and flew straight through, scattering silver beads of sound. “You see!” Goth roared. “There is nothing here!”
Shade felt his illusion falling apart and tried desperately to resolve it, but it was too late. Goth had punctured it with his claws, and now all his carefully bundled sound burst apart, and the vulture exploded across the chamber in a spray of quicksilver.
It was enough of a distraction for him to fly clear and cling to the ceiling, small again, trying to make himself even smaller. At least now he had his full vision back. He fired out echoes, and the whole chamber snapped into crystalline focus.
His heart sank. On the Stone and on the ground there were still so many northern bats in the grasp of the cannibals. He saw the old jungle bat with the crooked spine rear up over one of his victims, then slash down with his claws and teeth. His movements were frenzied, desperate. When he reared again, a heart was clamped in his jaws. He trampled across the ripped, lifeless body to his next writhing victim.
The old cannibal was lifting himself to strike again, when a gaunt Silverwing hurled himself against his crooked back, knocking him over. It took Shade a moment to recognize Ishmael, now launching himself in a hissing, shrieking bundle at one of the guards who pinned the sacrificial victim.
“Fly!” Ishmael shrieked at the bat. “Fly, brother.”
Ishmael’s brother wrenched himself free from the guards, and flew, up and up, and Ishmael tried to launch himself after him. Only inches in the air, he was hauled back down to the Stone, his tail caught in the jaws of the old cannibal. With one angry swipe of the cannibal’s claw, Ishmael’s chest was laid open, and he slumped lifeless.
Shade, watching in frozen horror, felt as if claws were clutching at his own heart, and he was suddenly aware he was whimpering. He shut his mouth hard, and forced his eyes away from Ishmael. But what he saw next almost made him cry out. There was Chinook, and not far from him, his mother, both on the Stone, both in the cannibal’s path of sacrificial victims. In less than half a minute, they’d be killed.
Then he looked up, and saw Goth dropping back toward the Stone, ready to start his own dark murder.
Shade let go of his roost and plunged down after him and, as he flew, he hammered himself a new disguise, this one simpler, more familiar, and it fit him like a second skin. He was Goth.
Scrambling madly down the rats’ tunnel, Marina caught up with General Cortez.
“Shade’s gone to the top! We can’t leave him!”
“He’s made his decision. Ours is to live!”
“You can’t do this!” Marina shouted. “They’ve got Ariel now too! He helped you get your son. You wouldn’t have that without him!”
She turned away from the rat general in disgust and started madly clawing at the roof of the tunnel, dust mixing with the tears in her eyes. She didn’t even know what she was doing, only she had to get aboveground, get to the top of that pyramid—the place where they took them to kill them.
She felt a paw on her shoulder, firmly pulling her back from the tunnel roof.
“You’ll start a cave-in,” said Cortez with surprising gentleness.
Marina jerked away and scrambled back to the hole she was trying to make. Again Cortez dragged her back, and she shouted at him, her words barely intelligible. Then blearily she saw him nod to two of his rat tunnelers, and they took over what she’d started, turning their powerful limbs to the task.
“Very well. We’re going back,” said Cortez.
Shade swooped before Goth and flared his wings defiantly. Goth looked up in annoyance, and then confusion convulsed his face, his flared nose spiking air as he jerked back to behold his twin. His jaws parted, but only a hot hiss escaped.
“Imposter!” Shade shouted, wracking his vocal cords to deepen his voice. “Guards, seize this trickster before he wastes more of our time!”
“No!” Goth hissed. “You are the lie!”
“No!” Shade roared, punching out sound with all his might. He saw the fur on Goth’s chest crater with the force, and the cannibal was knocked back in the air several inches. “See my power, and how can you doubt me!” Shade shouted to the guards, who looked on in consternation. “I am king!”
The surprise on Goth’s face gave way to indignant rage. “It’s you …” he hissed. “Shade!”
“Guards,” Shade shouted, “seize this imposter, and I will make him our next sacrifice!”
He saw four cannibals launch themselves into the air, their talons splayed wide to seize their king. But just as they were about to reach him, Goth lunged at Shade, jaws ready to clamp and tear. Shade was ready, and he danced clear, leading Goth higher into the chamber in a tight spiral.
He knew it was only a matter of time before Goth caught hold of his illusion and shredded it in his claws, but with every second, there was more confusion, more time for the others to escape—and less time for them to make their sacrifices in the darkness of the eclipse.
From the moment the sun was swallowed up in utter blackness, Voxzaco’s mind had become a clock, counting down the seconds of the eclipse. Four hundred and fifty seconds … four hundred and twenty-five …
They had sacrificed only eight hearts before the echo vulture had frightened the guards. And now, above him, Voxzaco saw two Goths circling one another above the Stone, and dozens of guards hanging back, trying to figure out which was the true king, not daring to risk sinking their claws into either.
Time, time, the seconds ticking down, and there would not be enough time.
All was confusion in the temple. The guards were terrified; some had deserted their posts altogether.
Voxzaco was certain of this: They would never be able to sacrifice the remaining hundred hearts to Zotz now. They had lost too much time. And too many of their offerings had escaped; he’d seen them flee as the pitiful guards cringed in terror.
All along, Voxzaco had known that Goth could never be Zotz’s true servant. He knew nothing; he was vain and arrogant and unworthy of the responsibility of serving Zotz.
Goth had failed.
It was up to him now. He was old, there would not be another eclipse in his lifetime—not for three hundred more years. If he was to see Zotz reign above and belowground, he would have to act now.
He knew what he must do.
It made such perfect sense to him.
In the center of the Stone, the metal disc. From the moment he’d first seen it, he knew its purpose. It was through the disc they would make the sacrifice.
And it was themselves who would be the most pleasing sacrifice to Zotz. What could be more pleasing to him than if they gave their own lives, their most precious possessions to him, so that he might gain power to reign? They would get their lives back a thousand times in the Underworld.
Voxzaco scuttled across the Stone, clambering over guards and northern bats to its center. With his claws he grasped the chain still fastened to the metal disc. He was old, but this he could do, his last thing in this lifetime.
He struck his wings at the air and, slowly, slowly he lifted, carrying the disc with him. Higher he flew, in all the confusion scarcely noticed.
Through the circular portal he ascended, and out into the darkness of day.
Two hundred and sixty seconds left.
He would have plenty of time. The disc was heavy, dragging him back to the earth, but he would fly high above the pyramid. And he would make all the sacrifices himself.
Pursued by Goth, Shade streaked low over the floor and could see the confusion and terror in the guards’ faces. Who was the rea
l king, who merely a shell of sound? Many fell back as he careened toward them, and his heart leaped as he saw several more northern bats soar free.
Where were Chinook and his mother now? Free? Had they flown free? But as he skimmed once more over the Stone, he caught sight of a bat with silver-tipped fur, crumpled and motionless even though no cannibals held him pinned. Why didn’t he fly? Then the bat shifted awkwardly, and Shade cried out.
Around his forearm was a band.
His father.
But there was no time to do anything now. A flash of bright sound snapped his attention up to the corners of the ceiling, and with his echo vision he saw those carved pairs of eyes start to flare. And he knew those eyes for what they were now, the eyes of Cama Zotz, the eyes that had polluted his dreams for so long.
A stiff column of air burst against him, enveloping him, and he struggled against it, this dark embrace Zotz had on him. But it stuck fast, and then seemed to sprout claws and pluck at his outer shell of sound.
“Shade!” Goth roared, tilting toward him. “I see you now!”
With a howling shriek, Zotz’s diabolical wind tore off a strip of Shade’s fake skin, then another, and he knew that within seconds he would be flayed bare, as naked as a furless newborn, pink and quivering.
He abandoned his illusion, sloughing it off like a snakeskin and leaving it hanging in the air, collapsing in on itself. He bolted, hoping that in the confusion he would have enough time to find a hiding place.
And go back to get his father.
Enraged, Goth slashed at the shimmering carcass that still hung in the air, a grotesque double of himself. Jaws snapping, he shattered the head and let it splinter into a million tiny echoes.
He whirled in time to see the small Silverwing darting for the ceiling.
Shade!
Somehow he’d known instinctively it must be he, this same malformed troublemaker who had dogged him with bad luck since they’d first met. A world of mischief packed into a runt’s body. But no longer.