Sunwing (11 page)

There was another entrance, midway up the terraces, and Goth could see bats streaming back toward it as the dawn’s light filtered through the jungle. His brothers and sisters. Goth took a deep breath.

“I have returned!” he bellowed. “It is I. Prince Goth. I have returned!”

His voice echoed off the trees and stone like a roar of thunder, silencing the bird and insect song from the jungle.

“I am here!” he shouted again, and the Vampyrum swirled around him to look. Soon he was encircled. After so many months, it was a pleasure to be among his own kind: large, powerful bats. And yet, they weren’t as big as they should have been. Many had a lean, hungry look to them, their ribs showing through the fur of their chests. Still, he basked in their excitement as they greeted him.

“Prince Goth!”

“Where have you been?”

“We thought you’d been killed!”

“Everyone! Prince Goth has returned!”

“Hail,
King
Goth!”

He snapped his head around to find the speaker of the last words. “Who said king?”

“I’m sorry, My Lord,” said the bat, taken aback by the ferocity of Goth’s expression. “But your father has died. You now are king.”

The words of Cama Zotz slithered through his head.
Do my bidding, then, and you will be king.

“When?” he demanded. “When did this happen?”

“Only four nights ago, during one of the firestorms. He was out hunting.”

“This is the cause of your firestorms,” he roared, lifting his wings high above his shoulders and revealing the metal disc sewn to his belly. “This is the Human fire that’s ravaged our jungle. They have used the northern bats as their carriers. They thought they could use me to destroy other Humans, and myself. But we will use this against them, you have my promise. They have insulted us, and Cama Zotz, and they must be punished. I will avenge my father’s death!”

“Hail to King Goth!” the bat cried, and his words were taken up by the others, building to a chant that thundered deliciously in Goth’s ears.

“Now,” he said, ready to give orders, “send for the carvers. I want this metal shorn from me and stored carefully!”

“Your Highness, I’ve been waiting for you.” Goth looked and saw Voxzaco, flapping his crippled wings toward him. He was the chief priest, and his father’s closest adviser. Goth found him as repellent now as he had when he was a child. His spine was arched, and it made him a poor flyer. His fur had almost all fallen away with age, leaving mangy patches of strawlike gray among raw-looking flesh. His breath stank from the noxious berries and leaves he ate to fuel his visions; and even Goth had trouble meeting his gaze sometimes, his eyes so huge in his gaunt head that they seemed to swallow you up. He had always looked like this, as long as Goth could recall.

“Waiting for me?” said Goth in confusion. “You knew I would return?”

“Yes,” said Voxzaco. “It is on the Stone.”

Then the old priest’s eyes saw the disc beneath Goth’s belly, and a small cry escaped his throat. He could barely stay aloft for the trembling that wracked his body.

“What is it?” Goth asked in alarm.

“Yes,” muttered Voxzaco, eyes still locked on the Human disc. “Yes, I see now. It fits perfectly.” He wrenched his eyes away and looked at Goth. “Come, let me show you.”

Inside the royal chamber, Goth hovered over the deep bed of soft leaves which the carvers had prepared for him. Then, wings churning, he carefully lowered the metal disc onto it.

“Free me of it,” he ordered, and the carvers set to work instantly, their specially sharpened teeth raking at the chain that connected the disc to Goth’s body. While Goth hovered in agony,
the carvers sawed through the metal links within seconds, and Goth soared upward in relief, and roosted. The metal ring was still in his stomach, and he did not welcome the idea of it being torn from his flesh, even by one of the royal surgeons.

“Now,” he said, turning to Voxzaco, who had been anxiously watching over the whole procedure, “show me the Stone.”

The royal chamber was rectangular, made of huge granite blocks, and all around the upper walls were jewel-encrusted carvings: twin jaguars, their eyes gleaming onyx; a two-headed serpent, winged in silver; and in every corner of the room, a pair of eyes, watching.

In the east wall, a large portal gave onto the outer staircase, all but sealed off by vines and ferns and crumbled masonry. In the flat, high roof was a circular opening, and it was always kept clear by Voxzaco, for it gave a powerful view of the stars and moon.

Directly beneath this opening was the Stone. It too was circular, thick, and twice the diameter of Goth’s wings. It lay flat on the floor of the chamber, its surface intricately carved with strange glyphs of Humans, birds and beasts, and bats—and Cama Zotz himself, his slitted eyes gazing out from various locations. It was Humans who had made the Stone, and the pictures were blackened and smoothed with age. They ran around the outer rim of the Stone and then spiraled gradually in toward the hole at its very center.

Goth had spent much of his life in the royal chamber, but had never examined the Stone in much detail. That was the work of Voxzaco, to crouch over these tiny little pictures and scratch away at the mold and dust of centuries. It was said he could predict the seasons with the Stone, the length of the nights, the phases of the moon. And it was his duty to perform the sacrifices upon the Stone: ripping out the hearts and offering them to Cama Zotz.

The hieroglyphs had become permanently stained with blood.

“Come,” said Voxzaco, scuttling onto the Stone and leading Goth closer to its center. “Look. This is the here and now. It is all on the Stone. Your capture by the Humans, the firestorms … “

Goth used echoes to peer impatiently at the Stone, but all he saw were a series of jagged lines. Was that supposed to be a bat there? Or flames?

“And here, the hardships of the kingdom,” Voxzaco continued. “The hunger we have faced.”

Goth remembered the leanness of the bats he’d seen. “Why hunger?”

“Many birds and beasts have fled the firestorms. They’ve gone into hiding, or gone farther south, even north. Hunting has been very difficult. But there have been the small bats.” The old priest jabbed a scaly claw at another picture.

Goth ducked his head closer to the Stone, wrinkling his nostrils at Voxzaco’s stinking breath. There was a plant in the jungle that smelled always of rotting meat. That was how the old priest smelled. There, in the Stone, he made out the shape of numerous small batwings. He thought of Shade. It made him uneasy, for some reason, the idea that these small northern bats could be on the Stone.

“They are easy prey,” said Voxzaco. “We have several dozen in the dungeon, and have been offering them to Zotz before eating them, and praying for more abundant times.”

“Good,” said Goth, wondering if Shade had survived. He remembered his dream of wrenching out the small bat’s heart. If Shade was still alive here in the jungle, Goth would eat him himself. In his mind, the Humans and the northern bats were linked forever—both had defied him and brought hardship on him.

“We will strike down the Humans, and the small bats,” said
Goth. “That has been my plan since I was first caught. We must raise an army and go north. We will annihilate the bats, and the Humans we will attack with their own weapon.”

“Yes,” said Voxzaco with a knowing smile. “That too is on the Stone. But there is something we must do first.”

“Show me, then!” demanded Goth. He didn’t like that superior way Voxzaco had with him. He could rip his heart out; he was king. He didn’t need some rotting carcass to tell him the future. Voxzaco was rumored to talk with Zotz himself. But so can I, thought Goth, and without berries and potions to help me. Still, there was a tremor in his gut. He wanted to know more.

“What do you see here?” the priest asked him

“A circle,” he said. “The sun.”

“Look closer.”

“Part of it’s missing.”

“And over here …” Voxzaco drew his sonic gaze to the next picture, where an even larger sliver of the sun was missing. “What does it mean?”

“There will be a total eclipse of the sun,” Voxzaco said, voice crackling with excitement. “Total night in the midst of the day.” He guided Goth through the pictures as they spiraled, quickly now, toward the very center of the Stone, the sun getting skinnier and skinnier until it had disappeared and was replaced by a slitted eye, Zotz’s eye. And then there were no more pictures, for they had dropped into the hole that was the Stone’s center: a circle of darkness.

“Do you realize the importance of this?” Voxzaco asked him. Goth glared back haughtily, silent.

“You know nothing of the gods, then.”

“I know about Zotz,” Goth growled.

“Perhaps, but do you know of Nocturna?”

Goth bristled in anger. “The little bat, Shade, he spoke of Nocturna. She exists?”

“As much as Zotz does. They are twins. Nocturna presides over the upper world. She ushers in the dusk, but also brings on the dawn. She is a thing of the night, but she draws her power from the sun. She is selfish. She keeps her twin brother, Zotz, in the Underworld, because she knows if he were above, his power would thwart hers.”

“No one is more powerful than Zotz,” Goth insisted. He was enraged at the idea of a rival to Zotz, angrier still that he hadn’t known about it. To think that those runty northern bats had Nocturna as their god.

“At one time Zotz and Nocturna were equally matched,” Voxzaco told him, “but over the centuries Zotz lost many of his followers in the upper world. The Humans here, who built this temple, who carved this Stone, they once knew and worshiped him. But they turned away, to worship the sun, perhaps. Still, there are more souls in the Underworld than above, I can tell you, and they want passage to this upper world. Nocturna uses the sun to keep Zotz below. But the eclipse will give us our chance. We can bring our god back, bring him to the upper world to reign over all creation.”

Goth could only stare in amazement. Not for the first time, he wondered if Voxzaco was deranged. Too many potions, too many visions. But you too have had visions, he reminded himself, thinking of the cave.

“How?” he asked.

Voxzaco was scuttling across the Stone. “We had a chance once before, and failed. Three hundred years ago, look. That was the last total eclipse, but the priest then, he wasn’t prepared, he knew nothing. This is our chance here. We will be the ones to succeed.”

“But how?” Goth demanded again, jaws grinding.

“I wasn’t sure until I saw you, King Goth. But then I knew.” Wings spread, he leaped off the Stone and landed beside the metal disc. Before Goth could stop him, he’d picked up the chain in his own claws and heaved the disc up into the air, carrying it back over the Stone.

“No!” Goth cried. “It will explode if it hits!” Voxzaco didn’t listen. Lurching down unsteadily, he inserted the metal disc into the Stone’s very center.

It fit perfectly. As if it had been made only to fill the hole.

“You see,” wheezed the priest. “Now is the time. This completes the Stone. It is the
end
of the Stone, the end of time as we have known it. Now, we must make a double sacrifice, and ask Zotz to show us how to destroy the sun.”

Goth watched as the two northern bats were brought up from the bone room, their wings gripped tightly by a guard on either side. He scanned their faces, hoping maybe to see Shade, but was disappointed. Normally, it was birds they sacrificed here, owls, and for special rituals, their own kind, a Vampyrum who was chosen for the great honor. “Put that one on the Stone,” Voxzaco instructed the guards. Goth watched as the first terrified bat was hefted up, his wings pulled tight, and pinned by two guards. The old priest drew closer, eyes closed.

“No!” said Goth suddenly. “I will make this sacrifice.” Shock convulsed Voxzaco’s face. “Only a priest can perform the rites, King Goth, You will anger Zotz if—”

“I have spoken with Zotz. He will speak with me again.” The priest smirked. “You think so, do you? You think you are
closer to him than me, after devoting my
life
to serving him and tending the Stone. I, his high priest?”

“He has chosen me as his servant,” Goth growled. “He has sent me visions. He has made me king, healed my wings, and
I
will make the sacrifice.”

Without waiting for the priest’s reply, he lunged for the northern bat and plunged his jaws deep into its chest, tearing out the shuddering heart.

“Zotz!” he cried, “I offer this to you. Tell me, your servant, what we must do to kill the sun!

Rearing onto his hind legs, he flared his wings and whirled so they billowed with air.

“Zotz!” he cried again. “Here is your servant! Tell me what I must do!”

That instant there was a tremendous roar, and then a huge sucking sound, which left the chamber in absolute silence. Then, from all corners came a maelstrom of wind so loud, it was like a moan, a chorus of dark angels, all singing different notes.

Goth flinched, and could see Voxzaco hide his head under his wing. The guards holding the remaining northern bat fell back in horror, and the small bat broke free and hurled himself into a crevice in the floor. It was unimportant. What was important was the presence Goth felt in the chamber, carried on this tide of sound.

Suddenly the presence wasn’t around him, it was
inside
him. He felt his jaws being pried open by an unstoppable force, and air surged through his throat.

“Ask!” he bellowed at Voxzaco, and he knew it wasn’t his own voice, but Zotz’s, speaking through him.

Voxzaco was still cowering under his wing, but he looked up at Goth, trembling violently.

“Ask!” Goth shrieked again.

“What must we do, Lord Zotz, to kill the sun?” Voxzaco asked.

“Give me more
life!”
Goth felt himself roar. “The lives of one hundred, their hearts! All in the darkness of the eclipse!”

“And what will happen then, Lord Zotz?” Goth felt his lungs swell to suck in more air. Then he was speaking again. “I will come. Now I come only as sound, a whisper of my full power. But kill the sun and the Underworld will be the whole world, and you, Goth, will lead my armies across its face. You will scour the Humans from this planet, those Humans who have tried to obliterate you. You will reign supreme over all things, all birds and beasts, and all the bats too. Your empire shall grow to the north, to take over the kingdoms of the Silverwings and Brightwings and all others. The owl kingdoms too shall be yours. Alive and dead. And we shall cross oceans to make new lands our own. That is to be your reward for serving me so well.”