The Brightest Night Read online

  But of course this was where Smolder was taking her, and of course she had no choice.

  He unlocked the door with a plain silver key from a chain around his neck, picked up a bucket of water that had been waiting outside, and led her into the dark interior.

  At first she thought her eyes were dazzled by the sun, but as they adjusted, she realized that the flashes of light around her came from small mirrors embedded in the walls, which caught the reflections of bronze oil lamps dangling at various heights on long wires from the ceiling far above.

  A winding ramp led from the floor around and around, up to the top of the tower. And here was Burn’s notorious, disturbing collection on display. Spaced at intervals along the ramp were the exhibits. Sunny caught glimpses of claws and misshapen tails and melted scales and thought with a shudder, I’m one of them now.

  Right at the bottom of the ramp was a wingless white dragon, its mouth twisted open in a roar of fury.

  Sunny jumped back, nearly knocking Smolder over, before she realized the dragon was dead. And then that was actually worse, because it clearly had been alive, once, before Burn slit it open, let the life pour out, and then stuffed it so she could display it.

  Is that going to be me?

  Instead of saving the world — am I going to end up stuffed and mounted on a pedestal?

  The fear that flooded through her made her want to lie down, cover her head with her wings, and scream for days.

  Trust in the prophecy, she told herself fiercely. I can’t die here. The dragons of Pyrrhia are counting on me.

  But Morrowseer’s voice was still there, whispering, “The prophecy isn’t real,” and as hard as she tried, Sunny couldn’t quite find that faith that had once chased out every fear.

  The white dragon wasn’t entirely wingless, she realized. It had little stubs on its back that had never grown into wings. There was something eerily sleek and snakelike about it. The most truly horrifying part was the look on its face.

  “Isn’t it creepy?” Smolder said in her ear, and she jumped again. “Someone brought him to Burn ten years ago, claiming he was the forbidden offspring of a SandWing and an IceWing. Which is the right thing to say to her, even if it wasn’t true — and who knows if it was — because she has, let’s just say, some pretty strong opinions about tribe purity and not contaminating SandWing blood with cross-tribe breeding.”

  “Oh,” Sunny said faintly. She thought of Starflight, who felt a million miles away right now. On her list of reasons why they probably wouldn’t work out, she hadn’t thought to include “contaminating SandWing blood.”

  “SMOLDER!” a voice bellowed suddenly from overhead. “I HEAR YOU DOWN THERE. If you don’t bring me more water right now, I swear I will catch that scavenger of yours and EAT HER.”

  Sunny’s heart plunged through the floor. She stared at Smolder in shock.

  She knew that voice.

  Queen Scarlet of the SkyWings was alive — and she was Burn’s prisoner, too.

  “Queen Scarlet is here?” Sunny whispered to Smolder. “Everyone’s looking for her! There are dragons who think we’re holding her captive!”

  He scratched his nose with one claw and sighed. “My sister likes to keep a close eye on her … things,” he said. “The SkyWing queen is a bit of a problem right now. Although mostly she’s a problem for me, the unlucky dragonsitter.” He glanced up at the dark ceiling way above them, then peered around the floor.

  “Flower!” he shouted suddenly. “Flower!” He lifted a small bell from around his neck and rang it, letting the tinkling noise echo across the dark space.

  Something pitter-pattered on the ramp above them, and after a moment, Sunny picked out a tiny figure scurrying down.

  That’s not a dragon, she thought with surprise.

  It was a scavenger — alive and upright and chattering like a squirrel, bold as you please, right in the middle of the SandWing palace. It jumped down the last level to the floor and darted over to Smolder. For a grim, worrying moment, Sunny expected him to rip the scavenger’s head off or offer the whole creature to her for dinner or something.

  Instead, the SandWing prince rested his front talons on the floor and the scavenger clambered right onto one of them, sat down, and resumed chattering a little louder, along with some vigorous paw waving.

  “Oh my gosh,” Sunny said, momentarily distracted from Queen Scarlet. “It’s so cute.” The scavenger looked kind of like a bigger, less hairy version of the sloths in the rainforest. It ran on its back two legs with easy balance, and its slender paws had no claws on them. A thatch of dark fur covered the top of its head and ran down like a mane onto its shoulders. It had a square of white fabric tied around itself that looked suspiciously as though it had been hacked off one of the main hall curtains, plus a sort of pouch bag made of the same material.

  “I know, isn’t she?” said Smolder. “That’s what I’ve been saying. I have to watch her carefully, though. Several dragons would be perfectly happy to eat her if they caught her alone. This is one place I figure she’s safe.” He lifted her up to his snout and the scavenger leaned forward to bump noses with him.

  “Where did you get her?” Sunny asked. “And why do you call her Flower?”

  Smolder reached around and set the scavenger on the back of his neck, where she grabbed on to his spikes and balanced as he started up the ramp. Sunny trailed behind him, wondering if this might be a good time to make a run for it, but she was pretty sure the tower door had locked behind them.

  “We had some scavenger visitors about twenty years ago — you may have heard about that,” Smolder said in his sarcastic voice. “This is the one who didn’t escape.”

  Twenty years ago? It took Sunny a moment to realize what he must mean.

  “Wait — visitors, plural?” Sunny asked. “I thought it was just one scavenger who killed the queen and stole the treasure.” They passed a fish tank glowing with a greenish light that seemed to be coming from the sea creatures themselves. There were fish with bulging eyes and extra flippers, seahorses with fangs, snails that oozed purple ichor, and an octopus kind of thing with at least twenty arms that was busily occupied with crushing up seashells and dropping them into its black beak of a mouth.

  “Nope,” said Smolder. “Three scavengers. Two escaped with the treasure, but we caught this one trying to hide just outside the palace. Burn was going to put her head on a spike on the wall and eat the rest, but I decided I wanted to keep her. And at the time, I had other dragons to back me up.” He took a deep breath and folded his wings back into a tent over the scavenger for a moment, before tucking them into his side again.

  “Blister argued that a scavenger head on a spike wouldn’t impress anyone — in fact, it would just remind everyone of Mother’s embarrassing death,” he went on. “Blaze thought Flower was cute, too, and wanted to see if we could get another scavenger and breed them to make more pets. And my brothers said I should get to have one thing I wanted, now that Mother wasn’t around to keep making me unhappy.”

  He paused, and Sunny glanced up at him. She got the feeling it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask any questions about Oasis.

  “SMOLDER!” Queen Scarlet bellowed again, and a burst of fire lit up the tower from an upper level.

  “Coming!” he called politely, then carried on talking to Sunny as if there were really no hurry at all. “Anyway they voted to let me keep her, and by now Burn is used to her. I was going to call her Stabby — she was pretty fierce with this little sword she was carrying, before we took it off her. But then she found a tapestry with some flowers on it and kept pointing to them, and then to herself. So I think she wants me to call her Flower, although all her chattering noises sound the same to me.”

  Sunny glanced at another glass exhibit case as they walked by, and then really wished she hadn’t. Inside were lots of parts of dragons — webbed SeaWing talons, a few tongues with three forks instead of two, half a wing that was speckled purple and gray unlike any dragon�
�s she’d ever seen, a coil of tail with strange lichens growing on it, and a number of oddly bent teeth and claws.

  She shuddered and dragged her focus back to Smolder and Flower.

  “I’ve never heard of an animal choosing its own name before,” she said. “But then, I’ve never heard of anyone keeping a scavenger as a pet either. The only pets —” She stopped and clapped her front talons over her mouth in horror. She’d nearly mentioned the RainWings and their pet sloths, which could have given away exactly where her friends were.

  Stupid stupid stupid, Sunny, she scolded herself. Be more careful about what you say.

  “The only pets?” Smolder echoed, giving her a curious look.

  “The only pets I’ve ever heard of are kept by scavengers,” Sunny said quickly.

  “Ah, yes,” said Smolder, and for the first time his voice was affectionate instead of sardonic. “Flower likes mice, and she’s always feeding any birds that dare to come down into the courtyards.” He lifted one of his claws and the scavenger patted it, as if to reassure him she was still there.

  “Does she … understand you?” Sunny asked.

  “Of course not, but she’s very clever,” he said. “I trained her to come when I ring this bell, and I taught her to draw, so she can draw pictures of anything she needs.”

  “She can draw?” Sunny said, fascinated. She’d learned to write and draw with a paintbrush that was more than half this scavenger’s size. “With what?”

  “She made herself this adorable tiny paintbrush. She likes to make things,” Smolder said proudly. “She’s also made all these cute little costumes for herself, don’t ask me why. It’s like how birds build nests, I think — all instinct, but really endearing. Although Burn complains that she’s worse than moths, leaving holes in all our curtains. I’d call it resourceful, if anyone asked me.”

  Resourceful? I’ll say, Sunny thought, remembering the burnt-out village as well. She gave the scavenger an appraising look, and the scavenger stared back at her with those dragonlike brown eyes, deeper and wiser than you’d expect. What’s going on in that tiny head? Sunny wondered. Her brain can’t be any bigger than a grapefruit. But maybe it works in mysterious ways. Maybe scavengers are cleverer than they seem.

  Another dragon suddenly loomed out of the shadows, but Sunny was able to stop herself from flinching away this time. It was another stuffed specimen, this time a MudWing with striated red lines along his outstretched wings. He had no claws, no teeth, and a puzzled expression.

  “Three moons,” Sunny said. “What happened to him?”

  “The seller said his egg was animus-touched,” Smolder said. “Or rather, animus-cursed. Some kind of vengeance thing, maybe. Who would want a dragonet without claws or teeth? How could he live? He was destined to end up here eventually.”

  Like me, Sunny thought despite herself. Weird-looking, no other use for me.

  Stop that. You have a real destiny.

  She tilted her head at the sad, stuffed dragon. Animus-touched? Could that be what happened to my egg? Did some dragon do this to me before I was hatched? Deliberately?

  But who, and why?

  Her mind flashed back to the questions Thorn had asked the NightWings. She was looking for a NightWing named Stonemover … that sure sounded like an animus name. What if he did something to my egg?

  She was so preoccupied with this question that when they came within sight of an orange dragon, she assumed it was another stuffed specimen and barely glanced at it.

  But then the dragon lunged at them with a furious hiss, and Smolder backed up in a hurry, nearly knocking Sunny off the winding ramp. She dug her talons into the cracks in the stone as her heart tried to leap out of her chest.

  “Sssssssmolder,” Queen Scarlet hissed. “Finally.”

  Coils of smoke wreathed around her horns, but they couldn’t hide what was underneath — how the side of the SkyWing’s face was melted into a hideous dark mess, revealing a glimpse of her jawbone underneath and pulling one of her yellow eyes down and out of proportion with the rest of her face. The rubies that had been embedded in her scales were gone above that eye, and so were all her earlier adornments — the golden chain mail, the medallions, the rings on her claws, the rubies on her wings. The only jewels left were the tiny rubies above her good eye, which glittered malevolently in the dim light.

  The last time they’d been face-to-face, it had been through the bars of a cage. Sunny had been the prisoner and Scarlet had been one of the most beautiful, powerful dragons in Pyrrhia.

  No wonder she hates us, Sunny thought. But Glory did this to her to save the rest of us. We’d all be dead by now otherwise.

  “Here’s your water,” Smolder said, setting the pail down on a claw-scratched X on the floor.

  The queen snatched at the pail, and Sunny realized that the X marked the very limit of her reach. Heavy chains kept her from moving any farther.

  On the other side of the X, littering the floor around Scarlet’s claws, were shards of shattered glass and puddles of glowing green slime. Here and there in the puddles lay the corpses of peculiar insects — Sunny could see oddly bulging caterpillars, nine-legged hairy spiders, and a bright blue dragonfly whose back bristled with sharp needle spines.

  “When are you going to clean this up?” Scarlet snapped at Smolder, her snout dripping as she came up for air from the bucket. “There’s slime on my beautiful tail and I keep finding bits of horrible bugs in between my scales.”

  He snorted. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before smashing up your host’s prized collection.” He nodded at something lumpy glittering in the shadows behind her. “Burn is going to be especially upset about her NightWing. They’re not exactly easy to replace.”

  Sunny realized that Scarlet must have been chained up near a stuffed NightWing, which she had then clawed and shredded in a fit of rage. Sunny shuddered.

  Scarlet lashed her tail. “I’ll get to the rest of her toys, too, once I’m free.”

  “Scarlet,” Smolder said patiently, “we’re not keeping you prisoner, we’re keeping you safe. If you were in your own kingdom right now, you’d be dead. You’re in no condition to fight Ruby for the throne.”

  “That’s Queen Scarlet to you,” she said fiercely. Her gaze moved to Sunny, and then she swiveled her head to stare with her good eye. Sunny took an involuntary step back behind Smolder.

  “I know her,” Scarlet growled. “That dragon is mine.”

  “I am not,” Sunny retorted. “I’m not anybody’s.”

  “I know where your RainWing friend is,” the queen snarled, pacing to the end of her chains and glaring at Sunny. “As soon as I am free, she is dead.”

  “Then I hope you stay locked in here forever,” Sunny snapped.

  “I have friends, too,” Scarlet hissed. “I won’t be here much longer.”

  Sunny looked up at Smolder, but his expression was more tired than worried. “Come along,” he said to Sunny. “We have to fly around her. I know it’s inconvenient, but I’m not taking responsibility for unchaining her — Burn can move her when she gets here, if she wants to.”

  He spread his wings and soared over Scarlet to the next level up, with Flower clinging tightly to his neck. Sunny followed, a bit nervously, her wings brushing the walls as she tried to stay as far out of Scarlet’s reach as possible.

  They landed close to the top of the tower, where the light was dimmest, and Sunny saw with a sinking heart that there were chains just like Scarlet’s here, waiting for her. They lay collapsed on the ground like dead snakeskins, and they clanked horribly as Smolder picked them up.

  Sunny curled her tail around her talons and looked at them for a moment, breathing deeply to calm herself. She looked up and met Smolder’s eyes.

  “Do I really have to stay here?” she asked quietly.

  Smolder hesitated with the chains draped across his front talons. Flower looked from him to Sunny, then slipped off his back. To Sunny’s surprise, the little scavenger
came right up and patted Sunny on the side of her neck. She didn’t have to be able to talk; the gesture said clearly, “Don’t worry, you’ll be all right” — as clearly as if the scavenger had had a tail to twine around Sunny’s.

  “It’s not like I have much choice,” Smolder said. “I can’t imagine what else to do with you.”

  “It’s just … really dark,” Sunny said. Her scales were practically crying out for the sunlight right beyond these walls. But more than that, the thing she couldn’t bring herself to say, was that she could already tell that being in here too long would carve out her soul one miserable moment at a time, until she’d be as empty and hopeless as one of the stuffed dragons.

  “I know,” Smolder said, and Sunny sensed the first hint of possible compassion in his voice. She wondered if it was partly because Flower felt sorry for her.

  “Tell you what,” he said after a pause. “I’ll think about it tonight and see if I can come up with something else tomorrow. If not, I’ll take you out for a bit at midday, at least let you stretch your wings in the sun, as long as you promise not to escape. Deal?”

  “Sure,” Sunny said. “Thank you.” It wasn’t much, but it sounded like the best she could hope for.

  He clamped the chains around her ankles, locking them with another one of the keys around his neck. Sunny turned her head away, unwilling to watch herself made a prisoner yet again, and spotted a large box tucked against the wall not far away, at the very end of the spiraling ramp.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Something new for Burn’s collection,” Smolder said, glancing up at it. “The dragon who came by to sell it claims it’s something rare and priceless and that Burn will definitely want it, but that it might die as soon as we open the box. So I’m leaving it closed until Burn gets here, and she can decide what to do with it.”