Wings of Fire Book Four: The Dark Secret (14 page)

That’s who was following us,
Starflight thought with a jolt of shock as eight NightWings came through the door, breathing flames in all directions. He saw the tables and the map catch fire, and he saw flames engulf the orange dragon, and then he felt talons seize his tail and he was dragged out the door into the pounding rain outside.

Flame, Viper, Ochre, and Squid were tossed on top of him, howling.

By the time Starflight struggled free and looked up, the door of the outpost was ablaze. Inside the cave, fire raged from wall to wall. SkyWings were shrieking in agony. A troop of black dragons blocked the way out, killing any soldier who tried to escape.

“No!” Starflight yelled. “I promised them! I promised them!” He flung himself at the back of the nearest NightWing, but the dragon shrugged him off easily. “You can’t kill them!”

Starflight hadn’t wanted to be taken prisoner, but these soldiers were just ordinary dragons, following their queen and doing their jobs. They wanted peace as much as he did. They didn’t deserve to die like this.

“Morrowseer!” Starflight cried. “Stop them!”

“You are peculiar,” Morrowseer said from the shadows right beside him. Starflight jumped. “They’re only a handful of SkyWings. Why would you care?”

“Can’t you spare them?” Starflight said desperately. “Please let them live.”

“It’s much too late for that,” said Morrowseer.

Starflight turned to face the flames and realized that this had been Morrowseer’s plan all along. That’s why he’d chosen a remote location with a limited number of dragons. That’s why he didn’t care if the soldiers questioned Squid’s presence — it was all part of the test. But whether the dragonets passed or failed, he’d planned to kill all the SkyWings, no matter what.

To erase any evidence that we were here — by murdering any witnesses who might wreck our story.

He stared hopelessly into the fire, certain that he’d be hearing dragons screaming in his dreams for the rest of his life.

“They nearly killed me!” Squid shouted at Morrowseer. “Just like I said they would! I quit! I don’t want to be in the prophecy anymore! There’s no treasure and it’s boring and stupid and I’m hungry and I hate your island and I want to go home!”

“Fine,” Morrowseer snarled coldly at him. “I’ve never met a dragonet more pointless than you. Go sniveling back to the Talons of Peace. See if you can find them by yourself.
I hope you die on the way.” He shoved Squid forcefully in the chest. “Get out of here! Go!”

Squid stumbled back, slipping on the wet rocks. It took him a moment before he could talk. “By myself?” he squeaked. “But — but you wouldn’t — my dad is the leader of the Talons — you
have
to be nice to me. You can’t send me off —”

“I certainly can,” Morrowseer hissed. Lightning flashed in the sky above him, illuminating the dark mountains looming over them all. “Leave or I will kill you. I never want to see you again.”

Three moons,
Starflight thought.
He really hates Squid.

“Wait,” Fatespeaker said, reaching toward the SeaWing. “Morrowseer, wait. He’s one of us. We can’t lose him.” Squid grabbed her front talons and squeezed, looking desperate.

“We have another one,” Morrowseer said. “We just have to retrieve her from the rainforest. But she’s clearly made an impression on any dragons who’ve run into her, so we’re stuck with her. Whereas this one is nothing but useless.”

“It’s not fair,” Squid whined. “It’s not my fault some other SeaWing is better than me.”

That’s true,
Starflight thought, feeling an unexpected stab of pity for the sniveling green dragonet.
No one could live up to Tsunami.

“You
can’t
do this,” Fatespeaker cried. “Flame! Viper! Tell him!”

Viper shrugged, and Flame hunched his wings. His eyes were fixed on the cave where his fellow SkyWings were burning.

“He said he doesn’t want to be in the prophecy anyway,” Ochre said to Fatespeaker.

“I didn’t mean it,” Squid cried.

Morrowseer whipped his tail around and smacked Squid hard over the head. “Leave. Now. Be grateful I’m not killing you instead.”

Whimpering, Squid backed away, spread his wings, and lifted into the storm-soaked sky. Starflight watched him flap slowly toward the Claws of the Clouds Mountains. A SeaWing alone in SkyWing territory — Squid wouldn’t last a day. Starflight’s head pounded and he felt nauseous. Every time he thought he’d seen the worst of Morrowseer and the NightWings, they did something even more horrible.

Fatespeaker was crying, tears and raindrops together soaking her face. She pressed her talons to her eyes as if she wished she could claw them out.

Starflight put one of his wings around her and she leaned into his shoulder, shaking.

“Maybe he’ll be all right,” he whispered. “Sometimes dragons surprise you.”

“Don’t get comfortable,” Morrowseer said to Starflight. “You are running out of chances to show me you can obey orders.”

Starflight wound his tail around Fatespeaker’s, thinking,
Why should I have to? Who decided you get to order me
around?
He realized he didn’t even care if Morrowseer read his mind, and he stared at the big dragon, waiting for a reaction.

Morrowseer looked away first. “Back to the island,” he ordered. “The others will clean up this mess.” He flicked his tail at the ruined guardhouse, then leaped into the sky.

Fatespeaker turned toward the mountains, as if she was thinking about going after Squid. Starflight wished he were that kind of dragon. Would he disobey Morrowseer and chase after one of his friends if this had happened to them? He thought he would for Sunny. He would never let her fly away alone into death. He thought perhaps he could be brave for her, if he ever needed to be.

Not brave enough to escape right now, though,
he realized.
But maybe they’re coming to rescue me. Maybe I should wait for them anyway.

Or maybe I’m looking for excuses to do nothing.

“Come on, before anything worse happens,” he said gently to Fatespeaker. She wiped her eyes and followed him into the rain-soaked sky.

*  *  *

The flight back to the island was even more exhausting than the flight out, and the storm was relentless the entire way. Starflight’s whole body felt numb by the time they touched down in the NightWing fortress. None of the dragonets spoke as they trudged back to the dormitory behind Morrowseer.

“Training at dawn tomorrow,” Morrowseer said, stopping at the doorway. The room was empty; the other NightWing dragonets were nowhere to be seen. He eyed Starflight and Fatespeaker, then turned to go.

“So … nothing to eat?” Ochre ventured in a woebegone voice.

It had now been days since Starflight’s last meal — tiring, energy-sucking days. But he didn’t think he had the strength to eat anything tonight anyway. He just wanted to close his eyes and try to forget the sad, dripping shape of Squid flapping away into the mountains.

“No,” Morrowseer rumbled. And then he was gone.

Ochre sighed pitifully. Viper hissed and marched to the sleeping hollow she’d chosen, burying herself immediately in a thick canvas blanket.

Flame lashed his tail for a moment, studying the room. “Not much better than last night’s dungeon,” he muttered. He and Ochre found spots beside Viper at the far end of the room, and soon the MudWing was snoring. But the SkyWing dragonet sat and stared into the coals, unmoving.

Starflight was half asleep already, but the minute he curled onto his bed, Fatespeaker hopped up beside him.

“Mmph,” Starflight objected sleepily.

“I know what we have to do,” she whispered. “We have to talk to the queen.”

“We?” Starflight asked.

“You and me. Without Morrowseer. Maybe she has no
idea how awful he is. I bet he’s lying about her ordering him to kill one of us. I bet he came up with that himself.”

Starflight coiled his tail, feeling uneasy. He wondered how involved Queen Battlewinner was in decisions about the dragonets and the prophecy. Had she ordered their trip to the mainland and the deaths of those SkyWings?

“
I
bet,” Fatespeaker said fiercely, “that she won’t be too happy with Morrowseer for sending Squid away.”

“Maybe she trusts him,” Starflight pointed out. “Maybe she lets him do what he wants without direct orders. In which case we could get in really big trouble for going behind his back.”

“Or maybe she has no idea what he’s up to,” Fatespeaker pointed out. “And maybe if we talk to her, she’ll let us both live, free the RainWings, stop the experiments, and let the prophecy happen however it’s supposed to without Morrowseer ruining everyone’s lives.”

Starflight tilted his head at her. “That’s a lot of hope piled onto a very slim possibility.”

“It’s worth a try,” she insisted.

He thought for a moment. His brain felt sluggish and confused. He needed real food and he needed sleep and he really needed his friends.

“Maybe we can ask for a private audience tomorrow,” he suggested.

“No!” Fatespeaker said. “Morrowseer won’t allow it. We have to go find her ourselves.”

“She doesn’t want to be found,” Starflight pointed out. “Maybe she keeps herself hidden for a reason.” He hadn’t come up with any good theories about that yet.

“Right, and maybe we need to know what that reason is,” Fatespeaker said.

She had a point. More knowledge would make them more powerful. If they found out something they could use …

“All right,” he said with a sigh. “We’ll go look for her.”

Fatespeaker shook out her wings and smiled at him. “Tonight,” she said.

“Tonight?” Starflight covered his head with his aching wings. “Don’t make me leave this bed before dawn. Please.”

“This is important, Starflight. Sleep now and I’ll wake you later. Deal?”

He sighed again. “Deal.”

He felt her hop off the bed. Listening to her footsteps patter away, his tired brain began spinning in hypothetical circles.

What is the queen’s secret? Why doesn’t she let herself be seen?

He thought of Queen Glacier and how she kept her SandWing ally, Blaze, cozily confined in a fortress built just for her, under instructions never to leave or do anything risky.

What if Queen Battlewinner is being controlled by someone, like Blaze is? What if staying hidden isn’t her own choice?

If something was wrong … if he could help Battlewinner, maybe she could help him in return.

Stop thinking and sleep,
he told himself. He could see the thin trail of smoke from where Flame sat, hunched and brooding just like he was.

But despite the exhaustion that seemed to weigh down every bone in his body, sleep was a long time coming for both of them.

Starflight was surrounded by scrolls. Stacks of scrolls, walls of scrolls as high as ten dragons, scrolls as far as he could see in every direction.

His intense joy — so much to read! Surely everything he could wish for had to be in here, all the answers to all his questions — warred with deep, paralyzing anxiety. How would he ever learn all this? How could he possibly get through it all before the test?

What was the test? Something about wings of fire. There had to be a scroll on wings of fire in here.

“Oops,” said a voice from the next aisle as a pile of scrolls went tumbling, scattering all around Starflight’s talons. Clay’s face poked out of the wreckage and he grinned at Starflight. “Oh, hey. There you are.”

“Clay, be careful,” Starflight said. He started picking up scrolls and re-stacking them as neatly as he could. “We need all this.”

“Do we?” Clay wrinkled his snout. “Does the prophecy say ‘A bunch of scrolls are coming to save the day?’ Funny, I don’t remember that part.”

Starflight gave him a look and picked up the next scroll.
How to Free the RainWing Prisoners.
“See?” he said, waving it at Clay. “All the answers we need.” He unrolled it eagerly, only to find it completely blank inside. Smooth, empty parchment stared back at him, indifferent to his disappointment.

“Come on outside,” Clay said. “We could use your help.”

“I can’t. I have to read all of these first.” Starflight started to spread his wings, knocked over another stack of scrolls, and turned in an agitated circle. Had the walls of scrolls gotten taller? He picked up another scroll:
Secrets of the NightWings
. “That’s what I need,” he muttered, rolling it open. But it was blank, too.

Clay was still waiting. “I can’t help you until I know everything,” Starflight told him. “I should stay in here. It won’t take long. Soon I’ll know a lot more than I do now. But I can’t go out there yet.” He pulled a shimmering golden scroll out of a pile. Surely something so beautiful had to have something useful in it.

How to Tell Sunny That You Love Her.

Starflight sighed. He knew before he unrolled it: blank, blank, blank.

“Starflight,” Clay said. “Starflight. Come on. Hurry. Starflight, he’s going somewhere, come on.”

It wasn’t Clay’s voice anymore — and someone was shaking his shoulder — and Starflight blinked awake, muddled and still sleepy.

“Come on,” Fatespeaker whispered again. “Flame just snuck out. Let’s follow him, quick.”

“Why?” Starflight mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “He won’t know where the queen is.”

But Fatespeaker was already hurrying to the doorway. He stretched, knowing he definitely had not gotten enough sleep, and followed her.

Flame’s red tail was just disappearing around a corner at the far end of the hallway. Fatespeaker and Starflight scurried quietly after him. She didn’t speak, so he kept silent as well. His dream had left him feeling disturbed, like he’d forgotten something really important … someone he had to warn.

Soon Flame found a long staircase that wound down, and down, and down through the fortress, each level darker than the last despite the coals glowering in the walls. He stopped a few times, listening, and Fatespeaker and Starflight stopped, too, ducking their heads and letting the shadows envelop their black scales.

Finally they reached the bottom of the staircase and Flame chose one of the tunnels, which seemed to lead directly into the rock of the volcano. Heat pulsed beneath their claws. Starflight paused to touch the walls, worried that he was feeling rumbles of movement from deep within the earth.

And then they came to the first cage.

It was empty, but Starflight could guess what the bars and the shackles were for. This was the NightWing dungeon, where Flame and Ochre had been imprisoned overnight.

Most of the cages were empty, but in the fourth one was a skeletal, drab gray RainWing, fast asleep. Fatespeaker and Starflight paused outside her cage, looking in. Starflight wondered why this RainWing was kept separate from the others in the caves outside.

“What are you doing here?”

Flame’s accusing face appeared from the shadows, making Starflight jump.

“Following you,” Fatespeaker said breezily. “What in the three moons are you up to?”

“None of your business,” Flame snapped. “Go away.”

“What if a guard catches you down here?” Starflight pointed out. “You’ll be in much more trouble as a SkyWing alone, prowling the fortress, than if you’re with two NightWings.”

The red dragonet considered that for a moment, smoke rising from his nostrils.

“Fine,” he said ungraciously. “Do whatever you want, I don’t care.” He turned and stomped away. Fatespeaker and Starflight exchanged a glance and followed him.

The last cage in the hallway contained a NightWing. This was where Flame stopped and rapped on the bars with one claw.

Not just any NightWing: Deathbringer.

The assassin lifted his head and regarded them. His wings rose and fell as he breathed, and the cage seemed too small for him. “Hello, SkyWing. Glad to see you on the outside of the cages this time.”

“What does it take to become an assassin?” Flame blurted. “I want to know the best way to kill another dragon fast.”

Deathbringer stood up and took a step toward the bars. “You mean, the best way to kill another dragon and not care,” he said.

Flame hissed and lashed his tail.

“You have to be doing it for a really good reason,” said Deathbringer. “And you have to believe in that reason completely. You also should avoid talking to your targets, in case you find out that they’re beautiful, sarcastic, and fascinating. For instance.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Flame asked with a snort. “Is that why you’re in here?”

The silver scales under Deathbringer’s wings glinted faintly in the torchlight as he shrugged. “Perhaps. But it’s not a terrible thing to question your orders, if you ask me.”

Flame flicked his tail and fidgeted with one of his wings.

“What orders?” Fatespeaker asked Flame and Starflight. “Who is this?”

“Can’t one of your visions tell you that?” Flame asked snidely.

“This is Deathbringer,” Starflight explained. “He was sent to kill my friends, but instead he let us go and he saved Glory from the other NightWings.”

“Three moons, keep your voice down,” Deathbringer said, looking nervous for the first time. “I think I’m the only
dragon down here — apart from Queen Splendor — but you never know.”

“That’s Queen Splendor?” Starflight asked.

“The first RainWing captured by the tribe,” said Deathbringer. “She’s the one who accidentally scarred Vengeance. The idea was, once we had their queen, they’d do whatever we wanted. Little did we know that not only do they have multiple queens, apparently they can go for months without noticing one is missing either.”

“Yikes,” said Fatespeaker.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Flame said.

“That’s all going to change,” Starflight said.
Glory will make sure of it.

“Because of Glory?” Deathbringer asked. Starflight jumped. Had the other dragon read his mind?

They stared at each other for a moment.

“Yes,” Starflight said finally.

The look on Deathbringer’s face was so obvious — so real and sad — that Starflight had the weird experience of being able to see what his own expression must be every time he thought of Sunny.

“Who’s Glory?” Fatespeaker asked.

“That’s … a long story,” Starflight said.

“I’m going back to bed,” Flame growled. A small burst of fire curled out of his snout as he pushed past Fatespeaker. “This is pointless.”

“Wait,” Deathbringer said. “Just — remember that you’re
your own dragon. You don’t have to do what you’re told. You can at least ask questions.”

“So I can end up like you?” Flame snapped. “Behind bars, soon to be dumped into a pit of lava? That does sound like great advice.”

Deathbringer shrugged. A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “It could be worse.”

“Like if you’d killed any of my friends,” Starflight said. “That would be worse.”

Flame snorted again and slithered away up the tunnel. Starflight watched the flickers of fire around his snout moving through the shadows, past Splendor’s cage, and back to the stairs.

“So Glory’s all right?” Deathbringer said to Starflight. “She made it back?”

Starflight nodded. “But she’s pretty mad about all the imprisoned RainWings.” He hesitated, thinking that he really shouldn’t trust this NightWing, no matter how much he’d helped them.

“Of course she is,” said Deathbringer with another half smile. “I never thought that was a good idea, for the record.”

The niches for the coals down here were rough, hacked out of the jagged rock walls instead of neatly carved and chiseled like the ones on the upper floors. So the shadows all had sharp edges, like talons trying to claw their way out of the stone. The heat was even worse than the blazing sun in the Kingdom of Sand, and Starflight’s head was starting to ache.

“You don’t — um, you don’t seem …” Fatespeaker started, then trailed off.

“Like a typical assassin?” Deathbringer finished for her. “Well, a lot of energy went into training me. But then I was sent to the continent and … I guess when you’re on your own for a while, you start thinking your own thoughts instead of anyone else’s. I’m afraid that makes me quite a disappointment to the queen.”

Fatespeaker grabbed the bars. “You’ve met the queen?”

He tilted his head at her. “No, not face-to-face, of course. She watches us through screens and speaks through her daughter, Greatness. It’s been like that as long as I’ve been alive anyway.”

Starflight’s scales prickled. What if the queen had screens like that all over the fortress? What if she was always watching her tribe without any of them realizing she was there? He looked around uneasily, thinking that the dungeon shadows could easily hide a few holes in the walls.

“We need to talk to her,” Fatespeaker said. “How can we find her? I’ve spent all night searching the whole moons-begotten fortress and I can’t figure out where she might be.”

“You have?” Starflight said, surprised.

“While you were sleeping,” she said. “I told you, I’m wide awake at night. I wanted to get started.”

“I’m the same way,” Deathbringer said to her. “Listen, it’s not safe to seek out the queen. She wouldn’t like it.”

“We don’t have to invade her magical privacy or whatever,” Fatespeaker said. “Does she have a throne room?
Somewhere we could talk through the wall and probably find her?”

Deathbringer hesitated. “This isn’t a good idea. I don’t think she’ll help you.”

“
I
think she will,” Fatespeaker said. She pressed her front talons to her forehead dramatically. “I saw it — in a VISION!”

Deathbringer gave her an extremely odd look. “Really.”

“My visions are never wrong,” Fatespeaker said breezily. “Although, I wish they’d warn me about more useful things sometimes.” She glanced down at her claws, and Starflight guessed she was thinking of Squid.

“Well,” Deathbringer said slowly, “if you really want to try the throne room — it’s on the far side of the fortress from here, two doors past the library if you’re coming from the council chamber. But even if she’s behind that screen in the middle of the night, which she won’t be, she won’t speak to you without Greatness there.”

“She doesn’t have to speak,” Fatespeaker said passionately. “She has to
listen
.”

Deathbringer met Starflight’s eyes and then shrugged again. “Well, good luck. But hurry — it’ll be dawn soon.”

“How can you tell?” Starflight asked. There were no windows in the dungeon, nothing to mark the passage of time. Nothing but pockmarked black rock surrounded the prisoners.

“I can sense it,” Deathbringer said. “Spend a few months sleeping out in the open, and you’ll get the knack of it, too.”

“What were you doing on your own on the continent for so long?” Starflight asked.

“I had a list,” Deathbringer said. “And regular meetings to receive new orders. Did you ever notice that whenever one side appeared to be winning the war, one of their top generals would mysteriously die? Not that I’m taking credit for anything, of course.”

“I did notice that!” Starflight said. “At least, from what I could figure out from the newest history scrolls. But if that was you — well, it seemed to happen to all three sides, so I thought it had to be a coincidence.”

Deathbringer spread his wings. “We only chose a side recently.” He paused. “I was not consulted in that choice.”

“You don’t like Blister either,” Starflight realized.

“Starflight, we have to go,” Fatespeaker said, tugging on his tail. “I want to find the queen tonight. Before Morrowseer can do anything else awful. Come
on
.”

Starflight stepped back reluctantly. He felt as if he still had so many questions for Deathbringer — and this might be the first NightWing who would actually give him real answers. “I’ll come back,” he promised. “Soon. I’ll — I’ll see what I can do to help you.”

“Don’t get in trouble,” said Deathbringer. “I’ll be all right. Good luck.” He tipped his wings toward Fatespeaker.

Starflight wished he could do something. He should try to save Deathbringer the way the NightWing had saved Glory — both from assassination and from the prison caves.
He should do something brave, something bold and kind and heroic. But he had no idea how to even begin.

Instead he followed Fatespeaker back into the fortress, back through the tunnels and hallways, in search of the throne room and the queen who might or might not be there, who might or might not listen, and who almost certainly would not help them.