Talons of Power

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Moon,” Darkstalker said quietly. “Last chance. Come with us.” He hesitated, dipped his head toward her, met her eyes. “Please.”

  “Darkstalker …” Moon said. “You’re my friend. You are. But Glory is my queen.”

  “Then come as my friend,” he said. “I could use a friend there. And I know you will soon anyway. I’ve had visions of us flying around the Night Kingdom together.”

  “Maybe soon,” Moon said. “But not this way.” She gestured at the dragons around them. “I have to make my loyalty clear.”

  “All right,” he said. “All right, it’s up to you. But come soon. I’ll be there, waiting for you.” He leaned down and bumped noses with her, then turned and strode briskly back to the platform.

  Standing behind him, revealed by his exit, was Anemone. She lifted her snout haughtily at Moon. “You don’t deserve his friendship. You’re not loyal at all. I say never come to the Night Kingdom. He’ll be better off without you!” She stuck out her tongue and stomped away.

  “Sorry about my sister,” Turtle said sheepishly. “She doesn’t like competing for attention. She’s not used to it.”

  “She can HAVE all HIS attention, if you ask me,” Kinkajou said.

  Turtle looked sideways at Moon. Her face was somber, but resolved. If Moon were under Darkstalker’s control, then Darkstalker wouldn’t have had to plead with her to come with him. She wouldn’t have been able to say no.

  Had she escaped his spell somehow? Or did it work differently on her? Or was this all part of a larger plan of Darkstalker’s?

  “Hello, my fellow NightWings,” Darkstalker boomed out over the crowd. “Is everyone here? Are you ready to follow me to the greatest place in the world?” He beckoned to a black dragon in the front row. She leaped up onto the platform, and Turtle realized that it was Fierceteeth.

  “Whoa,” he whispered to Kinkajou. “She’s out of the jail already? Do you think Glory knows?”

  Kinkajou hissed softly.

  Fierceteeth positioned herself at Darkstalker’s side, nudging Anemone off to a corner of the platform, which earned her a glare from the SeaWing princess.

  “My new lieutenant, Fierceteeth, will be organizing volunteers to carry our supplies. We’ll have a feast when we get there! Wait until you see our kingdom!”

  A murmur of excitement eddied around the tribe.

  Darkstalker swept his wings wide to encompass the entire crowd. “Our wonderful kingdom is not too far away. Our glorious future is on the horizon! Come with me, NightWings!” He rose into the air just as Glory and Deathbringer appeared from the trees. They swooped down to the platform and looked up at him as he hovered above them.

  “Time for all true NightWings to go, Your Majesty,” Darkstalker said to Glory. “Thank you for watching over them for me until I could get here. I wish you luck with your own tribe.”

  He ascended into the sky with powerful wingbeats that shook the treetops. And dragons began to follow him.

  One by one, NightWings lifted off, until the sky was full of beating black wings, lashing tails, and flashing silver scales. The sound of the tribe in flight rolled like a thunderstorm across the rainforest.

  Turtle watched them in despair. He couldn’t believe so many dragons had fallen for Darkstalker already. Barely three days free, Darkstalker now had an army at his claw tips and an entire kingdom to serve him. He became more unstoppable with every passing moment.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” he whispered. “He’s too powerful.”

  “But not all-powerful,” Kinkajou whispered back, nudging him. “Look.” She pointed to the NightWings who were still on the ground. Moon and Deathbringer, of course, but also at least fifty others — including, to Turtle’s surprise, Mightyclaws and his mother.

  “I guess some of them actually like us,” Kinkajou said proudly. “The smart ones can see how awesome it is here.”

  “Or they’re just terrified of Darkstalker,” Turtle suggested.

  Kinkajou whacked him with her tail.

  Still, compared to the mass exodus overhead, what remained was nothing that could be called a tribe. The few NightWings left shuffled closer together, glancing around as though the forest had suddenly grown bigger and darker. They looked like refugees from a disaster. Which they are, Turtle realized. From the disaster of the volcano, first, and now from the disaster of a king stealing their tribe.

  “Maybe we should go back to Jade Mountain after all,” Turtle said, a sense of hopelessness creeping over him. “It’s probably one of the safer places to be, with Tsunami and Clay there.”

  “Until it falls beneath thunder and ice!” Kinkajou protested. “Because we were too boring to save the world! No way, not me. You go if you want to. Moon and I can do everything.”

  “Um — I think a bit more definition of ‘everything’ might be in order,” Moon said, sounding a little alarmed.

  “No,” Turtle said glumly. “I’m staying with you. I promised.”

  “Nice to see that you’re completely thrilled about that,” Kinkajou said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t take long. We’ll be back at school learning math in no time.”

  How does she do that? Turtle wondered. How can she look at the same exact thing I’m looking at, but think, “oh, here’s a problem I can solve,” instead of “everything is hopeless”?

  They waited until later in the morning to leave; Moon and Kinkajou said their good-byes to Glory, and Mightyclaws told them he’d meet them back at school in a few days. Fearless and Mindreader and their families had gone with Darkstalker, and Glory wasn’t sure whether they’d be returning to Jade Mountain.

  Turtle wrote another note to Qibli.

  That was some advanced wishful thinking there. But maybe if he wrote it down, it would end up coming true. He brushed his talons over the slate, remembering how he used to write down everything — every passing idea or observation, as though they were pools of genius he had to capture before they evaporated. He liked the feeling of the slate pencil in his claws again.

  Maybe if I survive all of this, I could try writing again.

  It wasn’t hard to follow Darkstalker and the NightWings, even with half a morning’s lead; the tribe in flight was like a dark cloud in the sky ahead of them. At one point as they flew through the mountains, Turtle looked down and spotted what appeared to be a small, abandoned scavenger encampment. He imagined being one of those little creatures looking up to see literally hundreds of dragons suddenly thundering by overhead. If he were one of them, he’d find a rock to hide under and stay there for the next month.

  Darkstalker led them south of Jade Mountain, over the delta where the Winding Tail River spilled into the southern sea, and westward along the coast. Below them, waves pounded against a rocky shoreline and the ocean was dark gray with hints of brilliant green where the sun slipped through.

  Turtle couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be to dive into those waves. He could disappear into the watery depths and leave all these dangers behind. But he looked over at Kinkajou’s gray-blue-sky scales and determined expression, and he knew he couldn’t leave her.

  Darkstalker flew without stopping, and so the tribe did, too, although as the day wore on, they became more spread out across the sky, with the weakest fliers dropping farther and farther behind. The landscape along the coast shifted from mountains to scrub-covered hills and then desert as they reached the southern edge of the Kingdom of Sand. The wind up this high was chilly, but the sun beat down mercilessly on their scales.

  Turtle tried to remember the map of Pyrrhia in his head, so he could figure out where they were going. There wasn’t anything in this direction except more sand, as far as he knew, and then the western ocean. Another island?

  The sun was slipping down the sky ahead of them, shining right into Turtle’s eyes, when Darkstalker suddenly dove toward the land. Like a flock of hungry crows, the NightWings swept after him.

  Turtle sensed Moon hesitating beside him.
“I don’t want to join them,” she explained when she caught him looking at her. “I don’t want them to think I’ve chosen Darkstalker. This is just a visit.”

  “I don’t want to hang out with those dragons either!” Kinkajou said firmly. “Or listen to another endless windbag speech. Let’s find a spot to sleep where they can’t see us.”

  “But where are they going?” Turtle asked, screening his eyes and squinting west. “Why stop now? How much farther can it be?”

  “I have no idea,” Moon answered. They both hovered in the air for a moment, watching the faraway cloud of NightWings settle across the dunes and pebbled beach, like a black carpet flung over the ground.

  Kinkajou found a small cave facing the ocean that the three of them could just barely squeeze into, and Moon caught them a few crabs to eat. It was a relief to stop and rest his wings; Turtle immediately brought out his healing stone to erase the ache in his shoulders. But it also made Turtle anxious that he couldn’t see Darkstalker and he had no idea what the ancient animus would do next. What if he wasn’t really leading the NightWings to their old kingdom? What if he was planning to smash the entire tribe into a cliff?

  That delightfully morbid image wouldn’t leave Turtle’s brain as he tried to lie down and sleep. Moonlight poured into their cave from the night sky and from the silver reflections in the sea below. Kinkajou and Moon already had their eyes closed, their tails intertwined. He wondered if he’d imagined it that Kinkajou had maneuvered to be the one sleeping next to him. Her scales were warm, as though she’d been collecting sunshine in them all day, and in her sleep they’d turned indigo and gold, with flecks of citrus green.

  Carefully, reluctantly, he eased himself away from Kinkajou’s side, and slid out of the cave onto the beach. Sand crumbled around his webbed talons and sharp edges of broken seashells poked his tail. The waves looked as though they were trying to reach out and drag him in, hissssss shhhhhhhh hissssss shhhhhhhh safe shhhhhhhh hide shhhhhhhhhh.

  He turned his head north, toward the NightWing encampment, and watched. He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at that small patch of stars, but sometime later, he saw a vast shadow blot them out, then soar away west.

  Darkstalker’s going somewhere. By himself, in the middle of the night.

  Which means I have to follow him.

  Turtle glanced up the beach at the cave where his friends slept. But this was just a spying mission. He was the only one Darkstalker couldn’t see. Whereas if Darkstalker caught Moon and Kinkajou trailing after him in the middle of the night, there would be some explaining to do, insignificance spell or no insignificance spell.

  He rose into the air and followed Darkstalker, feeling as if his heart and stomach had traded places. Don’t be a coward, he scolded himself. This is nothing. Eavesdropping with a cloak of invisibility. Sneaking around, which is the one thing you’re good at.

  He thought of Peril’s fierce lack of stealth, the way she always made the most noise or picked a fight or accidentally blew something up. He missed her. He wondered what she was doing now. Their adventure together, setting out to stop Scarlet and find the rest of Jade Winglet, had felt a lot safer and more fun than this — maybe because he’d known her firescales could protect him, or because his magic had still been a secret from everyone back then.

  The three moons lit up a ridge of jagged mountains stabbing into the clouds ahead of them. For a moment Turtle was disoriented, and he turned to look back over his shoulder — but no, there were the Claws of the Clouds Mountains behind him. The ones up ahead rose out of the desert like a wall made of shark’s teeth, ending at sheer cliffs along the ocean.

  Oh, Turtle thought, remembering the map of Pyrrhia. There was a small peninsula that jutted out at the southwest corner of the Kingdom of Sand. If the continent was a dragon, and that peninsula was a talon reaching out, these mountains were sort of like Turtle’s armband. And nobody has crossed them in hundreds of years? Turtle wondered. They were quite forbidding; he wasn’t sure he particularly wanted to cross them himself.

  But that was clearly where Darkstalker was going. At one point, as they flew over land that began sloping up into hills, Turtle felt a sudden buzzing shock, like he’d accidentally grabbed a baby electric eel.

  What was that?

  There was no way to know, and it was over in a moment. Turtle glanced uneasily down at the ground below him and hoped he was imagining the pale flash of what looked like bones sticking out of the earth.

  Up ahead, Darkstalker tipped his wings to soar high over the peaks and Turtle followed, gasping in the thin air.

  And there was the Night Kingdom.

  Spread out below them, outlined by moonlight, were the ruins of an ancient city that sprawled across the peninsula. Much of it was hidden within canyons and cliff faces, but at the foot of the mountain, partially built into it, stood a palace, or what was left of a palace. In front of it was an overgrown square paved in marble and studded with bits of toppled columns; a kind of platform had collapsed in the center of it and was nearly submerged in a wild tangle of vines. All around the square were more ruins: once-elegant buildings whose roofs had caved in, statues missing heads, talons, tails, or all three, sculptural details worn away by weather.

  Darkstalker’s wingbeats faltered as he took in the devastation below him. He slowed to a stop, hovering outside the palace, staring down at the square. Bats flitted in and out of the windows behind him, like dark thoughts scattering into the air.

  He feels like he was just here, Turtle guessed. It’s like if I returned to the Kingdom of the Sea tomorrow and found that everything I knew my whole life has been destroyed, apparently overnight. And my tribe was scattered, weakened, with no queen.

  And everyone I ever loved was dead.

  The giant NightWing put out one talon and touched the overgrown wall of the palace. Abruptly he turned and flew toward one of the other stately buildings that flanked the square.

  Turtle spread his wings to follow and felt a sudden strange chill along his spine.

  As though someone was watching him.

  He twisted in the air, searching the palace windows. Every shadow was full of eyes, every stirring of air the quiet breath of a hidden dragon.

  Was someone still living here? Had some NightWings never left, all those hundreds of years ago?

  But no one emerged, and no sound came from within the palace walls.

  Maybe he was imagining things. This place was creepy enough to make anyone’s scales crawl.

  Turtle flew after Darkstalker as fast as he could. At first he couldn’t figure out what this new building was. It had at least three entrances, on different levels, although one was blocked by fallen rubble. Turtle also counted five towers, three of them half-tumbled away, and a trickle that looked as though it might once have been a waterfall. Darkstalker flew to the uppermost entrance and paced inside, ducking his head slightly to avoid cracking it on the high ceiling.

  And here, in the spiral hallways, there were clues: large rooms lined with tables, broken slates on the floor, displays of awkward, crumbling clay statues that looked as though they’d been molded by dragonets.

  Because they were, Turtle realized. This is a school.

  Why would Darkstalker come to a ruined NightWing school in the middle of the night? If he was searching for something of power, wouldn’t it be at the palace? Or if he was looking for something of his own, something he missed, wouldn’t it be … wherever he used to live?

  Turtle realized that he had no idea how old Darkstalker had been when Clearsight put the sleeping spell on him. He’d always imagined an older dragon, close to the age of the queen he was trying to replace.

  Darkstalker stopped at a turn in the corridor, brushed aside cobwebs and dust, and uncovered a painting. It was hard to make out the subject under the accumulated dirt of centuries, but Turtle thought it might have been a portrait of someone.

  Darkstalker traced the outer edge of it with his claws for a moment, a
nd then he put one talon on the center of the canvas. Centuries of dust swirled away in a sudden blast, making Turtle’s eyes water. He clapped his talons over his snout to stop himself from sneezing.

  When he looked up again, blinking away tears, he saw that Darkstalker had used his magic to restore the painting. Now it looked the way it must have looked in his time: brand-new, the colors and lines still sharp.

  It was a portrait of a female NightWing, seated with her wings folded back, gazing out at the viewer. Behind her, a web of fiery lines crisscrossed the sky, like a pattern in the stars, with smaller falling stars in between the lines. For the most part, it was not a great portrait; the proportions were all wrong, particularly in the undersized talons and oversized head.

  But there was something in her eyes that made you look twice. Something that made you think this dragon truly loved the painter.

  Could that be Clearsight? Turtle wondered.

  Darkstalker stared at her for a long moment before pulling himself away and continuing on. Turtle followed him through the spiraling labyrinth of the school until finally they emerged in a central courtyard. Classrooms looked out on the courtyard on all sides, and it wasn’t hard to imagine being a student here, eating lunch under the trees or practicing your flying.

  Turtle had to navigate the tangles of vines, shrubs, and tall grass carefully to avoid getting stuck, but Darkstalker’s huge talons crushed all the undergrowth in his path as he strode to a spot under a towering pine tree.

  Here he stopped. He bowed his head. His wings slowly drifted down to droop beside him.

  Long heartbeats passed.

  What is he thinking about? Turtle wondered. And … why here?

  He inched closer, although it made his scales run cold to step through Darkstalker’s shadow. It was an eerie, unsettling kind of spying, to stand right in front of a dragon and know he couldn’t see you. Also that if he did, you’d be dead.

  A silver scale shone on Darkstalker’s face, then slipped down his snout to splash on the ground.