Chapter 25
Gregor soared out over the canyon, throwing his body as high into the air as he could get. He could feel warm blood running down his leg. One of the rats had gotten a claw into him just as he was taking off.
"I'm falling," thought Gregor. "Just like when I came to the Underland." Only he was falling much faster now. There was no current supporting him from underneath, just the hideous void gaping below him. He had never really understood how he had landed safely the first time. Never had a moment of quiet and clarity to ask Vikus. Now he guessed he would never know.
Maybe it was all part of the same dream and he would finally wake up in his own bed and he could go and find his mom and tell her all about it. But Gregor knew it wasn't a dream anymore. He was really falling. And when he hit the bottom, he would not wake up in bed.
Something else was different from his first fall. By the sound of it, he had a lot more company.
Gregor managed to twist himself around in the air. The light from his hard hat lit up an astonishing scene. The rats who had been chasing him, and it must have been about all of them, were falling after him in an avalanche of stone. The unstable ground at the edge of the canyon had given way, bringing the whole army down after him.
With shock, Gregor saw a human was among the rats. Henry. He had been chasing Gregor, too. But that couldn't be right. They both couldn't end up dead. The prophecy only called for one more quester to die.
A flash of wing gave Gregor his answer. Of course. It was Ares, the bat who was bonded to this traitor. Ares would save Henry, and the prophecy would be fulfilled. But the rest of the questers would be safe, too.
Gregor had never seen Ares dive in earnest. He was heading for the ground at tremendous speed, dodging the rats that reached for him. Gregor began to doubt he would be able to pull out of it. "He overshot," thought Gregor as the bat rocketed past Henry.
He could hear Henry's desperate plea: "Ares!"
At that moment, Gregor slammed into something.
"I'm dead," he thought, but he didn't feel dead because his nose hurt so badly and his mouth was full of fur. Then he had the sensation of rising and he knew he was on Ares's back. He looked down over the side of the bat's wing and saw the rats beginning to burst apart on the rocks below. Gregor had been almost at the bottom when Ares had caught him. The sight of the rats was unbearable, even if they had just been about to kill him. Just before Henry hit, Gregor buried his face in Ares's fur and covered his ears.
The next thing he knew, they were on the ground. Luxa had his father strapped on Aurora. Temp bolted onto Ares behind him.
A bloody Ripred stood with three other rats that must have joined him in the final moments. He gave Gregor a bitter smile. "Delightfully full of surprises."
"What will you do, Ripred?" asked Gregor.
"Run, boy. Run like the river. Fly you high, Gregor the Overlander!" said Ripred as he took off down the road.
"Fly you high, Ripred! Fly you high!" shouted Gregor as Ares and Aurora sped over the rat's head.
They flew out over the canyon. Somewhere beneath them lay the bodies of King Gorger, his army of rats, and Henry. The canyon ended, and the bats headed into a large tunnel that twisted and turned every which way.
Now that he was safe, Gregor began to feel the fear of falling into that black void. His whole body began to shake. He pressed his face deep in Ares's neck, although it made his nose throb even more. He heard the bat whisper, "I did not know, Overlander. I swear to you I did not know."
"I believe you," Gregor whispered back. If Ares had known about Henry's plot, Henry would be flying somewhere right now and Gregor would be ...
The last words of the prophecy came back to him again.
The last who will die must decide where he stands.
The fate of the eight is contained in his hands, so bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps, as life may be death and death life again reaps.
So, it was about Henry as well as Gregor. Henry had decided to stand with the rats. That had determined the fate of the other eight questers. He had not taken care where he'd leaped, had not looked at all because he was so caught up in helping the rats. Henry had died because of his decision. Even to the last moments he must have thought Ares would save him. But Ares had chosen to save Gregor.
"Overlander, we have troubles," whispered Ares, interrupting his train of thought.
"Why? What's wrong?" asked Gregor.
"Aurora and I, we do not know which direction leads back to Regalia," said Ares.
"You mean we're lost?" said Gregor. "I thought Luxa said you could get us home in the dark."
"Yes, we can fly in the dark, but we must know which way to fly," said Ares. "This area is uncharted by fliers."
"What does Luxa think we should do?" asked Gregor.
There was a pause. Gregor assumed Ares was communicating with Aurora. Then Ares said, "Luxa cannot speak."
"Luxa is probably in shock," thought Gregor. "After what Henry did to her."
"To complicate matters, Aurora has a torn wing that must soon be mended if we are to continue," Ares added.
Gregor suddenly realized he was in charge. "Okay, look for a safe place to land, all right?"
The twisting tunnel soon opened out over a large river. The source was a magnificent waterfall that poured out of a stone arch and fell a hundred feet to the river below. Above the arch was a natural stone ledge, about ten feet deep. Ares and Aurora coasted over to it and landed. Their riders slid onto the stone.
Gregor hurried over to Luxa, hoping to figure out some kind of game plan, but one look at her told him he was on his own. Her eyes were unfocused, and she trembled like a leaf. "Luxa? Luxa?" he asked. As Aurora had reported, she couldn't say a word. Not sure what else to do, Gregor wrapped her in a blanket.
He turned to Aurora next. Her left wing had a long rip that oozed blood. "I can try to sew that up," said Gregor, not relishing the idea. He could sew a little, buttons and small tears. The idea of taking a needle to her delicate wing worried him.
"Tend to the others first," said Aurora. She fluttered over to Luxa and wrapped her good wing around the girl.
Boots still slept on Temp's back, but her forehead was cooler. The medicine seemed to have quieted his dad down, too, but Gregor was still unnerved by how fragile he looked. Clearly the rats had half-starved him. He wondered what else they had done.
Ares sat hunched over in a position of such extreme sorrow that Gregor decided it was best to leave him alone. Henry's deception had nearly destroyed the bat.
No one seemed physically injured by their encounter with King Gorger's army except Aurora and himself. Gregor opened the first aid kit and fumbled around inside. If he was going to stitch up the bat, he'd better do it before he thought too much about it. He found a small pack of metal needles and chose one at random. Several spools of spinners' silk were in the kit as well. He started to ask Gox which kind he should use but stopped himself when he remembered the blue blood pouring out over her lifeless orange body. He picked out a thread that looked thin but strong.
He cleaned off Aurora's wound as well as he could and applied an ointment she told him would numb the area* Then, with great trepidation, he began to sew up the rip. He would have liked to move quickly, but it was slow, careful work mending the wing. Aurora tried to sit motionless, but kept reacting to the pain involuntarily.
"Sorry, I'm sorry," he kept saying.
"No, I am fine," she would reply. But he could tell it hurt a lot.
By the time he'd finished, he was dripping with sweat from concentrating so hard. But the wing was back in one piece. "Try that out," he said to Aurora, and she gingerly stretched her wing.
"It is well sewn, Overlander," she said. "It should hold to Regalia."
Gregor felt relieved and a little proud he had managed it.
"Now you must address your own wounds," Aurora said. "I cannot fly, anyway, until the numbness leaves my wing."
Gregor washed off his leg and put on some ointment from a red clay pot he remembered Solovet using for wounds. His nose was another matter. He wiped off the blood, but it was still swollen twice its normal size. It was broken, most certainly, but he didn't know what doctors did for a broken nose. You couldn't really put a cast on it. He left it alone, thinking he'd probably do more harm than good trying to fix it.
Once he'd taken care of their injuries, Gregor had no clue what he should do next. He tried to assess their situation. They were lost. They had enough food for maybe one more meal. Luxa's torch had burned out, leaving only his hard hat for light. Boots was sick, his dad was incoherent, Luxa was in shock, Aurora was wounded, and Ares was in despair. That left him and Temp.
"Temp?" said Gregor. "What do you think we should do next?"
"I know not, Overlander," said Temp. "Hear you the rats, hear you?"
"When they fell, you mean?" asked Gregor. "Yeah, that was awful."
"No. Hear you the rats, hear you?" repeated Temp.
"Now?" Gregor felt a cold sickness fill his stomach. "Where?" He crawled out to the edge of the ledge on his stomach and peered out.
Rats were gathering, hundreds of them, on the banks beside the river. Several were sitting back on their haunches, their claws scraping at the chalky stone wall that flanked the waterfall. A couple tried to climb it and slid back to the ground. They began to scrape footholds in the surface. It would take time for them to scale the wall, but Gregor knew they would do it. They would find a way.
He crawled back from the ledge and wrapped his arms tightly around his knees. What were the questers going to do? Well, they would have to fly. Aurora would just have to manage if the rats climbed the wall. But fly where? The light in his hard hat couldn't last forever. Then he'd be in pitch black with a bunch of invalids. Had they gone through this whole nightmare only to end up dying in the Dead Land?
Maybe Vikus would send help. But how would he know where they were? And who knew how things were going in Regalia, anyway? Gregor and Henry had played out the last stanza of "The Prophecy of Gray." But did that mean the humans had won the war? He had no idea.
Gregor squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his palms into them. He had never felt so desolate in his whole life. He tried to console himself with the idea that "The Prophecy of Gray" had said that eight of them would live. "Well, Ripred will probably manage, but if the seven of us sitting on this ledge are going to survive, we'll need a miracle," he thought.
And that's when the miracle happened.
"Gregor?" said a puzzled voice. He wasn't really sure he'd heard it. "Gregor, is that you?"
Slowly, not willing to believe it, Gregor lifted his eyes toward the sound. His dad had weakly propped himself up onto one elbow. He was shaking from the exertion and his breath was shallow, but there was a look of recognition in his eyes. "Dad?" he said. "Dad?"