Wing & Claw 3_Beast of Stone Read online

  Dedication

  To Abby

  Map

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part II

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  About the Author

  Books by Linda Sue Park

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  THE stripes of sunlight on the cell floor slowly narrowed. Raffa had been staring at them for what seemed like hours, willing them to disappear.

  “Echo?” he called softly. “Time to look for Da.”

  The Garrison’s stone walls were dank with mold and mildew, slimy in some places, furred with moss in others. Echo, a tiny bat, was hanging from a chink in the stone. He stretched his wings and chirped, “Look Da, where Da.”

  Raffa’s father, Mohan, was also imprisoned somewhere in the Garrison. Ever since Echo had found Raffa in his cell three days earlier, Raffa had sent the bat out each evening to search for Mohan. But the prison was both vast and labyrinthine, and Echo had been unable to find him.

  Raffa held out his forefinger, and Echo fluttered to perch there for a moment. “Try the daybirth side again,” he whispered. Echo had already searched in every direction . . . but perhaps Mohan was being moved around? In any case, Raffa had no choice but to keep trying. “And then come right back, you hear?”

  “You hear,” Echo squeaked in response, and flew off.

  As far as Raffa could tell, he was alone in this wing of the Garrison. On the two previous forays, Echo had returned and reported the presence of other prisoners elsewhere in the building, but no sighting of Mohan.

  Raffa clutched at the bars and stared into the darkness. He heard the plink of water dripping into a puddle somewhere nearby. That was the only sound. Constructed of stone, the Garrison did not creak like a wooden building did.

  The harder he listened, the thicker the silence became.

  This time he’ll find him. Third time lucky, right?

  The minutes stretched into hours. Raffa dozed off twice, even though he was standing; the second time, his head lolled, then jerked and hit the bars, a very rude awakening.

  Finally he felt a slight movement in the air, followed by Echo landing on his sleeve.

  “Ouch!” the bat said. During their early days together, Echo had alighted on Raffa’s shoulder and pinched him. Raffa had exclaimed “Ouch!” Now Echo used the word to mean something like “Landing!”

  Raffa retreated to the rear of the cell and turned his back to the bars. “What happened?” he asked in a loud whisper. The silence was so complete, he was worried that the guards overhead would be able to hear the slightest murmur. “Did you find him?”

  “Where Da,” Echo chirped sadly. “No Da.”

  Raffa swallowed a groan of disappointment. He stroked the bat’s back with his fingertip, trying to comfort them both.

  It had been months since Raffa had spoken to his father. They had been separated ever since Raffa had fled Gilden last fall. He had finally seen Da in, of all places, a courtroom, where both father and son had been accused of arson.

  Making contact with Da would not, of course, get either of them out of the stone prison. But Echo’s nightly searches had given Raffa hope, even if those hopes were repeatedly dashed.

  In the morning, the rattle of keys woke Raffa as usual. Echo was safely hidden, hanging inside a crack between two stones in the darkest corner of the cell. As Raffa sat up and rubbed his eyes, a guard opened the cell door and put a wooden trencher on the floor. It would hold either a gluey porridge of oats (on the good days) or a piece of hard bread.

  The guard was accompanied by a servient carrying two buckets. Raffa exchanged them for the buckets in his cell—one for water, the other for waste. He was careful to keep the buckets on opposite sides of the cell.

  The long day began. When he first arrived at the Garrison, Raffa had spent much of the time curled up on the pile of rotted straw that served as bedding. Echo’s arrival had changed that. Now gloom and despair were banished, as Raffa tried constantly to come up with plans for finding Da and escaping.

  Echo slept for most of the day, which meant that Raffa still had no one to talk to for hours at a time. But what a difference it made, just to know that the bat was there, that he wasn’t alone!

  Raffa ate breakfast: half of whatever was in the trencher. He took great pains to divide the food exactly in two, and prided himself on the discipline it took not to gobble the whole lot. He put the trencher on the floor near the cell door, where the light was best. This was no guarantee against rats, but at least he could see them and chase them away whenever they got too close.

  Housekeeping next. His only real task was to stir up the pile of straw bedding, in what was probably a vain attempt to help it dry out.

  Then a series of exercises—whatever he could do despite his injured hand. Sit-ups, leg lifts, stretches, running in place. When he finished, he started all over again.

  Afterwards, he prodded the muscles of his calves. Getting stronger. Definitely.

  Rest time. Raffa sat on the floor leaning against the heavy iron bars of the door. He spent hours trying to think of a way to escape. The only chance was when the guard came in the morning. But he couldn’t think of how to get past both the guard and the servient. What was he going to do, fling moldy straw at them?

  When he felt his frustration mounting, he switched to thinking about apothecary, testing himself on botanicals and combinations and their uses. He did this for a long time, until it was bright enough for him to see well.

  The cell, one of several along a corridor at the foot of a steep set of stairs, was a rough horseshoe shape, windowless. Narrow slits in the stairwell wall let in three shafts of afternoon sunlight.

  Starting by the door, Raffa walked in a slow, careful spiral, looking at every inch of the stone floor. He walked the spiral again, beginning in the center, and then a third time in the opposite direction.

  He never found anything except stray bits of straw and rat droppings. But you never know, he told himself doggedly.

  Midafternoon was time for the second meal of the day. He ate slowly, making the food last as long as he could.

  More apothecary and more exercises, until finally the light dimmed. Echo began to stir, and it was time to search for Da again.

  Raffa decided not to repeat the mistake of getting his hopes up too high. Instead of standing at the cell door waiting for Echo to return, he lay down on the straw. Get some sleep, he told himself. I
t will make the time go faster.

  When he woke, it was so dark that he wasn’t sure at first whether his eyes were open.

  “Ouch!” Echo said as he landed on Raffa’s shoulder. “Da where.”

  Raffa shook his head, trying to clear away the sleep-fog. “It’s okay, Echo,” he said, his voice raspy. “You’ll find him one of these nights. I know you will.” But a shiver of panic chilled him. This was the fourth night. The Chancellor’s vile cohort, Senior Jayney, had said that he would be back in “a few days.” How many was a few?

  “Find him,” Echo said. “Da where.”

  Three or four is a few. Is five a few? Maybe I have one more night—

  “Da where,” Echo repeated.

  Raffa blinked. He still couldn’t see a thing. But Echo’s words finally broke through his sleep-muddled thoughts: not “Where Da,” but “Da where.”

  “Echo,” he said, keeping his voice low and calm. “Did you find Da?”

  “Find Da,” Echo said. “Find Da where.”

  Raffa’s heart thumped. Stay calm. Make sure. He knew from experience that Echo’s speech was not always easy to understand.

  “Is he far away, Echo?”

  “Not far.”

  Raffa touched the little bat with his fingertip. “You did it, Echo! You found him!” It was hard to keep his voice to a whisper. He sat up and hit his fists together in silent exultation. “Where is he?”

  “Birth peak birth peak,” Echo began. “Fall peak star birth—”

  “Oh, shakes,” Raffa said, already lost trying to follow Echo’s directions. The bat was using the words for the cardinal directions that Raffa had taught him: “daybirth” for east, “sunpeak” for south, “sunfall” for west, “nightstar” for north.

  “Never mind that for now, Echo. Did you talk to him?”

  “Talk Da.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Raffa good?”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  No reply.

  It would not be easy to use Echo as a messenger, with his limited speaking ability, but Raffa had nothing to write on or with, so he had no choice.

  “Echo, would you please fly back and tell him that I’m fine, except for my hand?”

  Beneath a soiled and stained makeshift bandage, a deep cut crossed his right palm. Whenever he made a fist, he felt a sharp pinch, which meant that there was probably a sliver of glass embedded in the cut. He wanted to let his father know about it—not as a complaint, but because he thought Mohan should be aware of everything that might be relevant to a possible escape attempt.

  Raffa still had no idea how they could escape. He was hoping that his father would have a plan.

  “Raffa good, hand no good,” Echo said.

  “Yes, that’s perfect.”

  The next time Echo returned, he had a single-word message from Mohan.

  “Hand?” Echo said. “Hand? Hand?”

  It seemed that Mohan wanted to know what was wrong with Raffa’s hand.

  “Glass,” Raffa said. “Echo, could you tell him ‘glass’?”

  “Grass,” Echo said obligingly.

  “No, not grass—glass.”

  “Grass.”

  Raffa groaned. When Echo had first spoken, he had used only words that bats would know, like fly and wing and perch, as well as the names of dozens of insects. Since then, the bat had learned a good many words for “human” things. But Raffa had taught him those words by showing him the actual object—a rope, for example—and then repeating the word several times. Here in the cell, there was no way he could show Echo what glass was.

  “Okay, let’s try this. Tell Da ‘glass’ and ‘pinch.’”

  “Pinch? What pinch?”

  “This. This is pinch.” Raffa gave Echo’s chest the gentlest of tweaks.

  “Pinch Da?” Echo asked.

  “Yes. Tell him ‘glass pinch.’”

  Even if Echo said “grass” instead of “glass,” Raffa was hoping that Da would think things through. Injuring your hand on grass didn’t make much sense. Maybe—probably—it was too much to expect that Da would guess that Raffa still had glass lodged in his hand. Still, Da would know that a cut, even a sore one, didn’t “pinch,” so if he thought about it long enough, he just might be able to decipher the message.

  And Raffa had one other thing on his side: the invisible thread that so often bound the thoughts and minds of people who loved each other.

  Please, Da, you can do it, you can figure it out. . . .

  Again Echo returned, this time with a report as well as a message. “Pinch Da, say ouch.”

  “Oh! I hope you didn’t pinch him too hard,” Raffa said.

  “Pinch quiet,” Echo said.

  “Echo good,” Raffa said, and couldn’t help smiling. Pinch quiet, such an Echo phrase.

  “Da say, grass pinch now?”

  “Wait—what?”

  “Pinch now? Pinch now?”

  Pinch now . . .

  If Raffa’s guess was correct, then it seemed that Da had indeed understood about the glass and was asking if it was still pinching him. Was he just worrying, the way parents did?

  Or was there another reason for the question?

  “Echo,” Raffa said, “tell Da ‘pinch now.’ Say . . . say ‘big pinch now.’”

  He was relieved that Echo didn’t seem to mind flying back and forth. But at this rate, how would they ever be able to put together any kind of plan?

  This time Echo delivered a message that Raffa found utterly baffling.

  “Fire,” Echo said. “Da say fire.”

  Fire?

  Raffa frowned, thinking hard. Da had to be talking about the fire at the secret shed compound, which Raffa himself had set.

  Chancellor Leeds, one of the highest-ranking officials in the Obsidian government, had ordered the capture of hundreds of wild animals. She was keeping them caged in a secret compound, and having them dosed with botanical infusions that made them docile and easy to train.

  And was she training them to do the work of humans, as she had first claimed? No, teaching birds to drape napkins had been a ruse to cover her true intent: To attack people. Not enemies of Obsidia but her own people.

  Since discovering the Chancellor’s plot, Raffa had felt a terrible sense of guilt. One of the infusions being used to dose the animals was a combination he had developed. He hadn’t meant for it to be used in such an evil way, but he still believed that he had a responsibility to do everything he could to stop the Chancellor.

  So he had planned a secret trip to the shed compound, to release the animals. Part of the plan involved setting a fire, both to distract the guards and to ensure that the animals would run away from the city and toward freedom.

  But the plan had failed almost completely. He had managed to release the animals from only two sheds. Hundreds of creatures were still imprisoned—creatures he would never be able to free, for now that the Chancellor had discovered his efforts, the compound would be even more heavily guarded than before.

  Raffa shook his head, trying to shed those thoughts as if they were fleas. He admonished himself to concentrate. Why would Da mention the fire now?

  Raffa kicked blindly at the pile of moldy straw. He lay down and began going over every detail he could remember, first of the fire and then of the trial.

  No answer came to him. He tried again, starting from the beginning. This time around, he fell asleep.

  And when he woke the next morning, he knew what Da was saying to him.

  Chapter Two

  IT would not be easy. No, it was worse than that: Raffa had no idea where to start.

  If only I had tweezers. . . . It would still hurt, but I’m sure I could do it, even with my left hand.

  No tweezers—not even anything sharp.

  Raffa sat on the pile of straw. He unwrapped the bandage on his right hand. Then he pulled a straw from the pile and used it to prod at the cut on his hand. It hurt, and the straw bent uselessly.


  He tried again with another straw. Same result, and he cursed at the pain as he tossed the straw aside.

  Next, he searched the cell again, knowing what he would find.

  Nothing.

  The triumph he had felt on deciphering Da’s message was beginning to evaporate.

  If Raffa was guessing correctly, Da wanted him to remove the sliver of glass . . . and use it to start a fire.

  Raffa stared at his hand, which was curled in a loose fist. He clamped his lips together, then opened his hand and stretched out his fingers as hard and fast as he could.

  “MMRRPHL!”

  He stifled a scream as the pain brought immediate tears to his eyes. He blinked them away and looked down at his hand. An agonizing success: He had managed to reopen the cut, which had already begun to seep blood.

  Raffa probed the cut with a tentative finger. Is that— Yes, ouch OUCH—I can feel it, I can feel the glass!

  He made several tortured attempts to squeeze the glass out of the cut. It hurt so much that he could no longer blink away the tears; they rolled unimpeded down his cheeks and dripped from his chin.

  Echo was dozing on the wall. He woke then, in the way of animals able to sense the moods and feelings of the humans in their lives.

  “Raffa no good?” he squeaked. He left the wall and flew to the perch necklace that Raffa wore—a twig tied to a leather thong. Hanging upside down on the twig, the bat looked up at his human. Echo’s eyes, large in his tiny face, were black with a tinge of purple.

  Raffa sniffled, torn between feeling sorry for himself and feeling ashamed of being a crybaby. Shoulders slumped, he looked down at Echo, hoping he would find comfort there, as he had so often in the past.

  The bat hung from the twig effortlessly. Raffa had learned that bats were able to sleep hanging upside down because when they were relaxed, their claws closed tightly, instead of opening the way a human hand did. Echo’s claws looked surprisingly like fingers, long and delicately curved and needle-sharp. . . .

  Suddenly Raffa sat up straighter.

  “Echo!” he said. “Can I borrow your claws?”

  Echo closed his wings and wrapped them around his torso, as if he were going to sleep. This posture made it possible for Raffa to hold him by the lower part of his body. Raffa had explained what he wanted to attempt, and Echo had been puzzled but cooperative.