Wings of Fire Book Four: The Dark Secret

  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.

  “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?”