Wings of Fire Book Four: The Dark Secret (15 page)

“Two doors past the library,” Fatespeaker muttered. “Something about a council chamber.” She paused at an intersection, looking down both tunnels and pressing her claws together.

“I think I remember where the council chamber is,” Starflight said. He’d been trying to create a map of the fortress in his head every time they left the dormitory. “That way, if I’m right.” He pointed.

“Then we go this way,” she said. “I think we’ll pass the library this way.”

“Library,” Starflight echoed, finally hearing what Deathbringer had said. “There’s a library! Fatespeaker! Have you seen it? How many scrolls do they have?”

“Like a million,” she said.

“A
million
!” Starflight felt momentarily faint, thinking of a million scrolls he’d never read. It would be just like his dream.

“That wasn’t a real guess,” Fatespeaker said, stopping to give him an amused grin. “I just meant ‘lots,’ really. I didn’t try to count them.”

“Lots is exciting, too,” Starflight said. He felt a little silly getting so excited over scrolls. But there had never been enough of them under the mountain. He’d read the same ones over and over and over again. Something new … something with more answers, more of the information he needed … that would be everything.

“Here it is,” Fatespeaker said, pausing at a tall open archway.

Starflight peered inside, his heart pounding. The room was cavernous, even bigger than the council chamber. Instead of coals lying open in wall niches, here the light came from fire that was carefully trapped in metal globes and kept away from the scrolls. Square nooks were carved out of the wall, all the way up to the ceiling, and in each square there were between three and six scrolls, neatly rolled and labeled and organized — organized! — with a mark next to the square and a large scroll rolled out on a main table as a catalog. He could see how it worked in the first glance and his talons ached to rush inside and start reading.

“You are so cute,” Fatespeaker said. “Look at your face — like someone just opened up a giant treasure box and it’s all for you.”

That was exactly how Starflight felt, looking at all these scrolls. He took a tentative step inside and Fatespeaker immediately grabbed his tail.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “We find the queen first. You can come back and moon over scrolls tomorrow.”

“If Morrowseer lets me,” Starflight said wistfully.

Fatespeaker dragged him away from the library and stopped two doors down, in front of a round stone room that was completely empty, with no windows and no furniture and only one niche for glowing coals. The wall opposite the door was a strange lattice of stone studded with diamond-shaped holes no bigger than ladybugs.

“I did see this room,” Fatespeaker said. “I just didn’t guess it was the throne room. Shouldn’t a throne room have a throne in it? Even if no one plans to sit on it?”

“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.