Firewing (24 page)

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.

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 frightened 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.

Beneath Shade and the four Pilgrims, the hills trembled, swelled, then began heaving themselves up into mountains. They rose with unreal speed, thrusting from the bones of the earth in a geyser of rubble and dust. A hundred wingbeats ahead of them, a sheer cliff face reared up, blocking their path.

“No!” Shade shouted, as he caught sight of Java, nosing upwards to gain altitude. “It’ll take too long to go over!”

“What, then?”

“Straight through.”

“How?” cried Yorick in disbelief.

“You’re sure?” Java asked uncertainly.

“Yes!” Shade swallowed. He wasn’t sure at all. He stared at the rock face they were streaking towards. It looked so real, so dense.

Just sound. Only sound. Bend it
. Ten more wingbeats would slam him into its surface. He drilled into the rock with sound, and plunged ahead. The noise was deafening as he bored his way through the mountain, the tunnel walls hurtling past all around them, solid as real stone. Inches before his nose, the rock melted against his sonic barrage.

Behind him, he could hear Yorick bellowing in terror. Shade’s throat was so raw he tasted blood, but anger held his exhaustion at bay. He would not be held back; he would push and push until they came out the other side. And near the Tree, Zotz would have no power.

His ears popped as they blasted through into open air.

Before them was the Tree.

Griffin took a wide berth around the trunk, waiting until he could approach the knothole in a direct line. He didn’t like the idea of skirting past all that blazing bark, didn’t want to feel the heat, or get caught in one of those erratic spurts of flame. Also, he didn’t want Luna any more scared than she already was.

There. Dead ahead was the knothole, and he was sure he could feel a slipstream, drawing him in.

“We’re going now,” he told Luna.

“Don’t tell me anything else, okay.” Her eyes were still tightly shut. “Let’s just do it.”

“Once we go in …” he began, and didn’t know how to finish. He didn’t know what would happen or where they would go, but he suspected it would be to different places.

She edged closer, pressed her cool cheek against his.

“Thanks, Griffin. For bringing me all this way.”

“I think you brought me, mostly.”

“I’m going to see you again. Remember, all the people I love will be there. You said that.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

“Maybe not right away, but soon.”

“Griffin!”

With a shock of delight he turned and saw his father, flying towards him.

“Dad!” He led Luna in a slow curve towards his father. “This is so
good
,” he said. “It’s so good you’re alive! And here!”

“My son,” said his father, and then his fur seemed to shimmer and slip, peeling away from his body, even as it enlarged monstrously.

“Dad?” Griffin screamed.

And then his father, who was not his father, was upon him.

“No!” Shade bellowed from above, flapping so hard he felt his wings would wrench his chest apart. He saw Goth, his sonic disguise rupturing, sailing towards his son, calling out his name—and Griffin was going to him. “Griffin,
don’t!
” Shade bellowed, but it was too late. Goth had his son in his talons, jaws clamping into him, wrenching. Luna was veering wildly around Goth, striking at the
cannibal bat, but the Vampyrum paid no attention, so intent was he on his murderous work.

“Goth!” Shade roared as he pelted downwards. He had never in his life felt such fury. He was screaming and did not know what he was screaming; the world was nothing but insane noise, threatening to implode his skull. He needed to be faster. Two words only in his head:

Let me
.

Dazzling light suddenly swirled out from his son’s body with a pure, transfixing wail. Shade gasped as it coursed across Griffin’s fur, his limp wings, his pinched face, and then began to rise off him like a luminous plume of smoke—and Shade knew it was over.

Goth reared back, and his son’s body fluttered earthwards like a tattered leaf, leaving the intense, beautiful bundle of light and sound swirling in the air.

His son’s life.

What Shade saw next was the most terrible thing he had ever witnessed—more terrible even than the actual murder. Knocking Luna aside, Goth swirled around the pulsating mist of sound and light, gathered it in his wings, and hungrily shoved his snout right into it.

“No!” Shade cried, rage pouring from his eyes and throat like lava.

Goth opened his jaws, and his chest swelled massively as he sucked the light and sound into himself. Inhaling Griffin’s life. In went the light. In went the sound. Into Goth’s body. “Done!” Goth roared when he had gorged on the last flicker. “We will catch him!” Java shouted off Shade’s left wingtip, but Goth looked up and saw them all plunging towards him. He had a life in him now, but it was the life of a weakened newborn, and Goth must have known it would not be enough to triumph
in battle now. He whirled towards the inferno of the Tree and streaked for the knothole.

Shade angled himself to cut Goth off. He would catch him and take him by the neck and wrench Griffin’s stolen life out of him, tooth and claw. He swung down behind Goth, not ten wingbeats away, and felt a powerful current pulling him headlong towards the knothole. “Goth!” he shouted.

With one final stroke, Goth accelerated towards the Tree at a speed that no creature could naturally achieve. To Shade’s eyes and echo vision, he became a blur as he blasted through the knothole and instantly disappeared. Gone. Shade braked sharply, fighting the Tree’s current with all his might, and pulling away just in time. The flames scorched his belly and the underside of his wings.

He circled, muttering to himself, staring at the knothole, not quite believing he’d lost Goth. Then he turned and flew back to the place where he had seen Griffin’s body fall.

Griffin opened his eyes to find his father beside him, face pressed against him.

“You’re glowing,” Griffin told him groggily. His father nodded, and Griffin felt the strange warmth of his tears.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, confused, and then he saw Luna off to his right, and four other familiar bats whose names he couldn’t recall just yet.

“I’m sorry,” said his father. “I wasn’t fast enough.” Griffin looked at the massive fiery column of the Tree, towering overhead. They weren’t far from its base, the earth mounded high
around the trunk, some of its flaming roots arching up through the soil. He could feel its heat. He saw the knothole, remembered how close he had been to entering—and now felt the first tectonic stirring of panic within him. He forced himself to listen, and sensed no beating of his heart. His heartbeat stolen by Goth. He was dead.

Pain awoke in his neck and chest, and he winced, looking at his wounds. He would not be going home now. His mind kept shunting the thought aside, not wanting it to get too close, not wanting to understand its full, terrible shape.