“Maybe there’s a throne behind the screen,” Starflight suggested.
“Hmm,” she said. “Still seems like it shouldn’t get to be called a throne room, then.” She stalked up to the lattice wall and pressed one eye to one of the holes.
“Fatespeaker!” Starflight said, shocked. “We’re not supposed to try and look at her!”
“Don’t panic,” she said. “It’s all dark back there anyway.” She tilted her head and tried another hole lower down. “Maybe there’s something glowing, but it just looks like fire. I can’t see the queen. Do you think she’s there?” She rapped on the screen. “Hello? Your Majesty?”
Silence from the wall.
“Queen Battlewinner?” Fatespeaker tried again. “We really need to talk to you. It’s us, the dragonets from the prophecy.”
“Well, the two NightWing options,” Starflight amended.
“Hello?” Fatespeaker said.
Nothing. Fatespeaker knocked and kicked the wall a few times, but there was no response.
“That is SO FRUSTRATING,” she growled. “Your Majesty! I’m not impressed!”
“It is the middle of the night,” Starflight pointed out. “She’s probably not even there. She must sleep somewhere.”
Fatespeaker hunched her wings, then sighed and nodded. “All right. We’ll sneak away from Morrowseer and try again tomorrow.”
Starflight did not love the sound of that plan. But he already knew better than to try arguing with Fatespeaker.
They turned to go … but just then, Starflight heard a noise.
A noise like scraping, coming from behind the wall.
He looked at Fatespeaker and saw that she’d heard it, too. They both returned to the screen.
“Your Majesty?” Fatespeaker said.
When there was still no answer, Starflight said, “If she’s back there, she doesn’t want to talk to us.”
Fatespeaker folded her wings in close and scowled. “Then we should make her see us.” She started pacing along the wall with the screen. “There must be a door here somewhere. She has to get in and out somehow, right?”
“Unless she always stays in the same room,” Starflight said. His mental map of the fortress started clicking together. “I think — I think the room behind this wall could also overlook the council chamber. Maybe that’s where she lives.”
“So we just have to find a way into it,” Fatespeaker said, charging into the hallway.
“Is that a good idea?” Starflight asked. His claws caught on the rocks as he hurried behind her. “I’m pretty sure she won’t be pleased.”
“Too bad!” Fatespeaker cried. “We’re her subjects, too! She has to listen to us!”
Clearly Fatespeaker didn’t know very much about queens or tribes and how they worked. Perhaps the Talons of Peace camp was a little more open to input from all dragons. Or perhaps Fatespeaker would have been like this no matter where she was raised.
She stopped abruptly, frowning and tipping her head from side to side. “How do we get there?” she muttered to herself. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Having a vision?” Starflight asked, recognizing the expression on her face.
“Trying to,” she said. “But all I can see is walls. Rrrgh.”
“Let’s try this way,” Starflight suggested.
They followed winding passages that seemed to be circling the council room, but he couldn’t find any doors that might lead to the place where the queen had been hidden.
But he did find one room with the door open, and it was empty when he peered inside. It was a strange room, too. The space was dominated by a giant map on the wall — Pyrrhia, but with more detail in it than he’d ever seen on any map before. Every inlet, every fjord was drawn with scientific precision. Even the rainforest sparkled with information: the location of the main RainWing village, all the rivers and streams that crisscrossed the jungle, and the two tunnels that led to the Kingdom of Sand and the NightWing island. Each was marked and carefully labeled.
Starflight noticed that the SeaWings’ Summer Palace was noted on there as well, in ink that looked darker and newer than some of the other marks, and he wondered whether the NightWings had only learned of its location when it burned. The Deep Palace was not on there — still a SeaWing secret, apparently.
But strangest of all, the map was covered with tiny squares that were each labeled “Scavenger Den.” There were seven of them, from the outer islands of the Kingdom of the Sea to the peninsula below the Kingdom of Sand; there was even one among the snowy wastes of the Ice Kingdom. And each one had a careful, deliberate X slashed across it in green ink.
What are they doing? Starflight thought, staring at the map. Why track scavengers? What do the X’s mean?
“What’s a scavenger den?” Fatespeaker asked from behind him.
“Have you ever seen a scavenger?” Starflight asked. She shook her head. “They’re these little creatures with hardly any fur, and they run around on two legs, and they love to steal treasure — kind of like magpies or raccoons, but bigger. And sometimes they get pointy sticks and poke dragons with them, which means they can’t be very intelligent.”
“Oh,” Fatespeaker said, “right, like the scavenger who killed Queen Oasis and started the whole war in the first place.”
“Exactly,” Starflight said. He shivered, remembering the only ones he’d ever encountered — the two who’d tried to kill him in Scarlet’s arena. In his nightmares they always stared at him with big, dragonlike eyes, and even though he found them terrifying, he couldn’t help thinking, They’re in the same situation I am. They’re just trying to survive this arena.
“So these dens — that’s where they live?” Fatespeaker reached up and traced the outline of one of the dens with her claw.
“I guess so,” Starflight said. “I’ve never seen one. I always imagined warrens of tunnels — the scrolls say they like to live in big groups, like meerkats. But they try to keep their dens hidden, according to what I’ve read. They’re safer from predators that way.”
“Predators like us,” Fatespeaker said cheerfully.
“I have no idea why the NightWings would care about them,” Starflight said, scratching his head. A theory was bubbling at the back of his mind, but before he could put it together, Fatespeaker slid her talons along to the outer edge of the map and let out a yelp.
“Look! There’s something behind here!”
She unpinned one corner of the map and lifted it up, and sure enough, there was a small tunnel hidden behind it.
“Let’s go,” she whispered, ducking into it with no hesitation.
Starflight’s heart was trying to clamber up his throat and strangle him. But what else could he do? If this tunnel led where it looked like it might — he couldn’t leave Fatespeaker to face Queen Battlewinner alone.
If only Tsunami were here, or Clay! They’d at least be some use in a fight, unlike him.
His claws shook as he lifted the corner of the map and slid into the dark tunnel behind Fatespeaker.
“I’m having a vision!” Fatespeaker whispered dramatically in his ear, nearly making him leap out of his scales. “Of us standing in front of Queen Battlewinner! This is going to work!”
“You scared me half to death,” he said, clutching his chest.
“Sorry,” she said, and even in the dark he could sense her grinning.
“So,” he whispered as they started creeping forward, “in your visions, there is a Queen Battlewinner. She’s alive? She exists?”
“Of course,” Fatespeaker said. “What?”
“Nothing,” Starflight said. “It’s just — I’ve been wondering, since no one ever sees her and apparently no one even hears her except Greatness … well, if she were dead, this would be a pretty clever plan, is all. As long as Greatness claims Battlewinner is alive, she can issue orders and do all the things a queen might do — in Battlewinner’s name — but no one can challenge her to try to take the throne.”
“That is way sneaky,” Fatespeaker said. “I would never have thought of that.”
“I could be wrong.” His nose bumped suddenly into stone. He stood up on his back talons and poked the low ceiling above their heads, then breathed out a plume of fire. The tunnel ended at a large boulder right in front of them.
Fatespeaker hissed. “No way! This has to be it!”
Starflight gingerly felt around to the back of the boulder and realized there was empty space under his claws. “The tunnel keeps going, only smaller, I think,” he said.
There was a hole in the wall, hidden by the boulder, barely big enough for a dragon to fit through. He reached his talons inside and guessed that the hidden tunnel led up in the right direction.
“Oooo,” Fatespeaker said, sniffing at the darkness. “I foresee that this is going to be mad scary. You go first.”
It felt like a volcano was about to explode out of Starflight’s chest. Well, if anyone does catch us, they can’t kill both of us. They need at least one of us alive.
He didn’t find that thought very reassuring as he climbed into the dark tunnel and felt sharp black rocks digging into his talons. The only thing that was oddly comforting was the sound of Fatespeaker clambering behind him, close enough to step on his tail a few times.
The tunnel sloped up and around in a kind of spiral. When a last twist suddenly left them standing in an open cave, they were both caught by surprise.
Starflight froze and Fatespeaker blundered into him.
This is it.
On one wall, the circle shape punctured with holes, looking out over the council chamber. On another wall, the screen that faced the throne room. And then there was a third wall with only a few carefully hidden eyeholes, for spying on something or someone or somewhere without being noticed.
But no queen.
There were no dragons here, no signs of life.
Where else could she be? Or am I right — is she dead after all?
In the center of the cave was an enormous cauldron full of lava, big enough for two Morrowseers. It looked like a jagged black bowl that had been yanked and pummeled out of the volcanic stone. Molten lava filled it to the brim, bubbling and spitting and gurgling weirdly. A few drops spattered over the side, and Starflight took a cautious step back, remembering the stinging burn on his foot.
The room was stiflingly hot, almost painfully so. Starflight slid around the cauldron, hugging the walls, to peer through the secret eyeholes across from the tunnel entrance. Fatespeaker followed him, uncharacteristically quiet.
Starflight didn’t recognize the room on the other side of the third wall, but he could see a low table, and the leftover bones of prey were strewn around the floor.
“I bet this is where the council members eat,” he said quietly to Fatespeaker. “It’s a good time to spy on dragons — when they might say anything, if they don’t realize she’s watching.” He glanced at the other two screens and shook his head. “Then again, it looks like she’s not doing much watching right now.” He leaned in to peer through at the dining cave again.
“Maybe you’re right about —” Fatespeaker started, then cut herself off with a cry of terror and seized Starflight’s shoulder at the same time, clutching him so hard he thought she might draw blood.
“Ow, what —” he began, then turned and saw what she saw.
A dragon was rising up out of the lava.
Starflight had been terrified plenty of times since leaving the caves where he grew up. He’d thought nothing could ever be worse than the moment Queen Scarlet walked in with her guards, killed Dune, and took all the dragonets prisoner. But then there was the moment he stood in her arena, knowing that she intended for him to be violently dead by the end of the day. That was followed by the moment Queen Coral had them thrown in her prison, Tsunami’s plunge through the electric eels, the SkyWing attack on the Summer Palace, their frantic escape right through the middle of a battle, and perhaps the actual worst, when Sunny had disappeared right in front of him in the rainforest. Not to mention all the scary things he’d faced since being abducted by the NightWings. In fact, he’d spent most of the last few weeks in a state of near-constant terror.
This was a whole other level. A level of that’s not scientifically possible and has it been under the lava this whole time? and THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE and now this is really it and there’s no one to protect me and I’m definitely absolutely one hundred percent going to die because THAT IS A DRAGON WHO LIVES IN LAVA.
Its head and wings came first, in a fountain of golden molten lava, and then a set of claws shot out and clutched the side of the cauldron. The dragon shook itself, sending splatters of lava flying. Slowly the lava poured off her head, revealing a thickset neck, a battle-scarred snout, and black scales that gleamed like polished ebony against the orange-yellow pool around her.
“Starflight, Starflight, Starflight,” Fatespeaker whispered in a panicked rush, shaking his arm violently. “Do something!”
“Like what?” he whispered back. The tunnel was on the far side of the cauldron. They’d have to get past the dragon and the lava she was dripping everywhere if they wanted to run away, which was what he really, really wanted to do.
Hissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
The dragon in the lava leaned forward and glared at them. Buzzing white steam seemed to be rising from her scales. Her tongue flicked in and out as she studied the two dragonets, and Starflight realized there was a glint of icy blue in the depths of her dark eyes. When she opened her mouth, he spotted two teeth that were the same shade of blue, looking more like icicles than regular teeth.
“Who?” she rasped suddenly. Her voice was hard to hear — creaky and quiet and rough and eerie, like claws scraping on ice several caves away.
“N-n-n-no one,” Starflight stammered.
“Please don’t kill us,” Fatespeaker squeaked.
“Don’t make me,” said the lava dragon. She hissed again, her claws flexing around the edge of the cauldron. “How?”
“How … did we find you?” Starflight filled in. “We were looking for the queen — Queen Battlewinner.”
“I,” said the dragon. Her eyes narrowed. “You?”
“We’re — we’re the dragonets of the prophecy,” Fatespeaker said. “I’m Fatespeaker and this is Starflight.”
“Ahhh.” The queen sank lower in the lava. “Hmm. Unimpressive.”
“How is this happening?” Starflight burst out. “Why aren’t you dead? The temperature you’re immersed in — the boiling point — the physical reaction of lava and scales — I saw what happened to Vengeance. You can’t be swimming in lava. It just isn’t possible. Even dragons born from blood-red eggs, like Clay, could probably only withstand that kind of heat for a minute or two, and as far as I know NightWings don’t have eggs like that anyway, so — this can’t be happening, scientifically speaking.”
The queen let out a small, possibly amused snort, blowing bubbles across the surface of the lava. “Mastermind’s son,” she rasped. She studied him for a moment, then leaned forward, opening her jaws as wide as they would go.
For a moment, Starflight thought she was about to lunge out of the cauldron and bite their heads off. But then he realized from her odd position that she was actually holding herself so he could look inside her mouth. His fear slowly started to fade as curiosity took over, and he stepped closer.
“Starflight,” Fatespeaker whispered anxiously. “This wasn’t in any of my visions! I’m really not sure about this!”
“Three moons,” he said, his eyes widening. “Fatespeaker, look! You can see right down her throat … and it’s blue.” The walls of Battlewinner’s throat were lined with what looked like pale blue frost, small swirling patterns that were feathery or sharp and all glinted oddly.
“What is it?” Starflight met Battlewinner’s eyes again.
She snapped her mouth shut. “Ice.” The creak of her voice seemed to rattle her to her wingtips; she
took a deep breath, dipped her whole head in the lava, and emerged again.
“Ice?” Starflight echoed. His mind whirled into gear, trying to solve this mystery. Was this connected to the NightWing bacteria that killed their prey? Or had she just swallowed a lot of ice to combat the lava? That made no sense. Where would the dragons even get ice out here on the island, where it was perpetually too warm?
Queen Battlewinner was watching him, as if this was a test and she had decided to save her breath and see if he could figure it out.
Her breath …
“IceWings!” Starflight burst out. “Their weapon — the frostbreath!”
Battlewinner nodded, her heavy shoulders sliding up out of the lava and back down again. Her black tongue flicked in and out again, and this time he saw that it also had a layer of thin shimmering frost on it.
“You got blasted by an IceWing,” he said slowly. “You must have been on the continent when you … ran into one, is that it? And you fought, and it hit you, but not on the outside … maybe your mouth was open and it went right in and down your throat to freeze your insides. Which means you should have been dead within a day.”
The queen flicked her wings back, scattering sizzling orange droplets around. “Not so easy,” she growled.
“To kill you,” Starflight finished. “You made it back here. And the lava — the lava stops the effects of the freezing? Is that it?”
“Indeed.” The queen hissed again. “A balance.”
“But how —” Fatespeaker said. “I mean, how did you know the lava wouldn’t just kill you right away?”
Starflight could imagine it clearly — Battlewinner on the continent, perhaps looking for a new home for the NightWings, running into an IceWing and nearly dying in battle. But she staggered back through that long, awful flight to the island, feeling colder and colder and closer to death by the minute. The fire that burned inside fire-breathing dragons like NightWings and SkyWings would have been working against the ice to keep her alive for a while, but it wouldn’t be enough to save her.
By the time she’d made it to the island, she would have been shivering violently and feeling terribly sick as her stomach and intestines began to freeze and fuse together, spreading the icy plague out from her organs toward her scales. At that point, he could imagine she felt so cold that diving into lava sounded better than anything. Even if it killed her — and maybe she expected it to — it couldn’t be worse than what she was already feeling.
Wings of Fire Book Four: The Dark Secret Page 13
