“Are you okay, Sky?” Silverhorn peeked back over her shoulder.
“It’s hard to explain,” Sky said slowly, “or even understand. There was an old vulture on the mountaintop. And a pool.”
“Another vulture.” Silverhorn snorted. “I’m sorry, but they’re just creepy. I envy you the pool, though.” She gazed ruefully at the heat-cracked mountainside.
“Me too.” Rock blew at the arid dust. “Was the Great Spirit there?”
“Not exactly. But . . . I do know the Great Spirit is with us.” As she said the words, somehow the pain of Moon’s death felt a little less raw. “That one thing is true.”
As they reached the lower slopes, Sky paused to tug at tufts of rough grass between the stones; they’d stripped most of the trees on their way up, and she was glad of something to eat. Rock pulled up a tussock by the roots. “It’s tough and dry,” he said, narrowing his green eyes as he chewed, “but it’s food.”
“Look, there are shrubs down there with nicer leaves,” said Silverhorn. Half turning, she jerked her horn. “Right th—” She broke off with a panicked snort as her feet skidded.
Sky lashed out to grab her, and as her trunk curled around Silverhorn’s tail, the world upended. Suddenly she, too, was falling—but it was her head that spun and tumbled, straight into Silverhorn’s memory.
Stronghide stood before her in the blue shadows of night. She could see only his haunches and his stiff, twitching tail, but he was talking to someone in the undergrowth. Sky craned to make out the shape in the bushes, but it was no good.
She could hear their voices, though. She knew what they were discussing. She should try to stop them. He was her leader, but she could try—
Sky gasped for air. She hadn’t fallen down the slope at all; she was on her knees on the sharp ground, her trunk filled with hot dust. The shapes that loomed above her were dark and featureless, silhouetted against a blinding sun. She blinked hard; Rock was kneeling by her side, his trunk on her forehead. Silverhorn stood beside him, her small eyes wide.
“Sky, what happened?” Rock pleaded. Sky flinched, shuffling away from his touch, and stared at Silverhorn.
“I know what you did,” she whispered. Her voice felt hoarse and strange in her throat.
Silverhorn’s ears flattened. “W-what do you mean?”
Sky scrambled to her feet, her forelegs scraping against the rough stones of the path. Her chest felt hot and tight with anger.
“You knew!” she cried. “You knew what was going to happen and you didn’t stop it!”
Silverhorn tensed in horror.
“What?” Rock lurched to his feet. “Sky, what are you talking about?”
“I saw it when I touched you!” Sky’s voice cracked. “Silverhorn, you didn’t stop Stronghide. You went along with the murder! How could you?”
“I—I—” Silverhorn stammered, blinking rapidly. “I’m so sorry, I—”
Sky shouldered Silverhorn aside, making her stumble off the track, and lurched into a run.
“Sky!” she heard Rock trumpet to her, then, harshly to Silverhorn: “Stay back!”
Heavy steps pounded behind her; she heard stones roll and clatter. “Sky! Sky! Wait!”
She couldn’t stop, and she had no breath to answer him. Her own weight bore her on down the steep slope, her feet moving faster and faster to save herself.
“Sky, tell me what happened so I can help!” bellowed Rock.
Sky thundered on; she didn’t care that she couldn’t stop. She only wished she could outrun what she’d seen in Silverhorn’s memory.
Suddenly her forefeet sounded hollow and strange as they thudded on the earth. She didn’t even have time to understand before she heard an earsplitting crack that echoed from the rock walls of the valley.
At last, Sky dug in and stiffened her legs, and though her body swayed wildly, she jolted to a halt. Panting, she stared up at the mountainside. The cracks in the ground were shivering up into the mountain itself; she could see them widening and splitting. Rocks came loose and tumbled. Then, impossibly, a great chunk of the mountain shuddered and detached itself.
Sky backed a pace, gaping at the mountain. As if a vast invisible claw had hooked it and pulled, part of the slope peeled away and began to slip downward. Huge boulders thundered toward her, and she knew that in moments, much of the mountain would follow them. Pebbles rattled around her feet, but she barely felt the sting as they hit her legs. A billowing cloud of white dust rose, turning the sun to a blot of clouded light.
Frozen with fear, Sky could do nothing but watch the rocks plummet toward her, bouncing wildly. She couldn’t breathe, let alone move.
Something huge slammed into Sky, and the falling hillside snapped back in her vision. At first she was sure it was the landslide, that she was dead already; then she felt Rock’s warm body against hers. She could hardly breathe. One of the boulders tumbled by with a great crash, so close she felt the wind of its speed. More pale dust billowed around them.
“Go!” Rock shouted over the deafening racket.
Coughing and panting, they ran. Rock shoved her, forcing her to swerve with him, first to one side and then the other. Another boulder careered past, gouging a long scar in the raw mountainside.
A chunk of rock hit Sky’s haunch, making her stagger. The noise was deafening, worse than the loudest thunderstorm. She and Rock were half running, half sliding, the mountain seeming to carry them along. Then, abruptly, the ground vanished.
I’m falling! A gash in the earth yawned beneath her, and she felt herself toppling in. Lashing out her trunk, she sought a grip, her helpless feet flailing at the sides of the crevasse.
She thudded onto her flank on a sloping ridge and began to slide, hitting the bottom with a bone-jarring crash. Rock rolled to a stop beside her, his feet churning. His dark gray skin had turned almost white with dust.
Dazed, Sky gasped for breath, her ears still ringing from the roar of the mountain. Rocks were still falling; one struck her trunk, and her eyes watered with the pain, but it brought her to her senses. She staggered to her feet. They were in a sheer valley of stone, but up ahead, carved by the weather, was a shallow recess.
“Over there!” Sky trumpeted over the noise of the landslide, gesturing with her injured trunk. She didn’t know if Rock heard her—he replied with a bellow she couldn’t understand—but he must have gotten the idea. He pounded with her toward the recess, scree stinging their hides.
Together they huddled beneath the overhanging earth, rumps pressed against the back of the shallow cave, as a new shower of stones pattered down, throwing up clouds of dust. Sky coughed, her eyes stinging and watering.
At last the skittering clatter of the rocks was silenced, and the clouds of dust began to settle. It was still impossible to see far, but the mountain had stopped falling. Craning forward, Rock peered out from their shelter, up toward the slopes.
“Why would the mountain break?” He was breathing hard. “Do you think the Great Spirit’s angry at Silverhorn?”
Sky sneezed; the air was heavy with dust, and her mouth and trunk felt scratchy. “The Great Spirit wouldn’t bring down a mountain to punish one animal,” she said. “I think it happened because the earth was dried out.” And my mad stampede can’t have helped.
“Well, I wish it hadn’t.” Rock picked his way to the center of the crevasse. “I don’t know how we’re going to get out.”
In a few heartbeats, the gorge had entirely changed. The two elephants had fallen into a bare, narrow valley; now it was cluttered with boulders and rock shards and broken trees. Sky’s heart sank; the slope they had slithered down was blocked by a colossal pile of boulders.
“Maybe we can shift some of these.” Rock wrapped his trunk around one of the lower boulders and tugged, his legs and shoulders straining. The boulder moved slightly, but the stack above it shifted, too, and a few small rocks rattled down to the ground.
“Stop.” Sky touched his shoulder with her trunk. “Th
e rest are going to come down on our heads.”
Rock stepped back, and they eyed the rock pile. The stones had fallen in a jumble, the heaviest barely balanced on the lightest. Near the top, the biggest boulder of all rocked slightly, looking as if a gust of wind might bring it down on them. High above Sky could see the broken side of the mountain, the raw gaping hole as strange as the socket of a lost tusk.
“We have to try to get up there,” said Rock. Tentatively, he placed a foot on one of the boulders. But it turned under his weight, and the higher rocks wobbled ominously.
“I’m lighter than you,” Sky said. “Let me.”
She set one foot onto the lowest boulder, then another. It supported her, but the boulder above it was huge. She stretched her forefeet, but the stones shifted again, showering grit and small stones.
“Get down!” Rock called sharply.
Wobbling, Sky dangled a leg backward as rock grated horribly above her. The pad of her foot grazed the ground, and she lurched backward with a jolt. Rock pulled her away, and they stood panting in fear.
“Stand back,” shouted a familiar voice, muffled and distorted.
Sky tilted her ears. Grunts of effort came from behind the rock pile, and she saw them tremble and shift. A fine stream of dust trickled down.
The topmost boulder was shunted violently to one side; it teetered, then toppled to lodge at a wild angle against the cliff. In the new gap Sky glimpsed a horned head. Another stone rolled, then another; finally Silverhorn was fully visible, peering down from the top of the slope. She was filthy, her folds of skin streaked with white dust and grit.
“Are you all right?” Silverhorn sounded fearful, full of concern for her friends. It didn’t seem possible this was the same rhino who had done nothing to stop Stronghide’s plot.
Lowering her head, Silverhorn got back to work, shunting rocks to the side and gradually forcing her way downward. When she pushed away the teetering boulders at the top, Rock and Sky were at last able to help, rolling and lugging the lower rocks.
When the path was wide and shallow enough, they scrambled up, panting. Stone scraped Sky’s belly as she hauled herself up over the edge and onto the firm ground of the track.
“Thank the Great Spirit,” she gasped. Rock clambered up next to her, his flanks heaving. A line of dried blood marked his side, but Sky knew they were lucky to be alive at all. Silverhorn hung her head, peeking up at Sky like a frightened calf.
Sky swallowed. “You saved us.”
“Of course,” Silverhorn pleaded. “I understand you’re angry. But please, let me explain?”
Sky nodded stiffly. “All right. But this doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.”
“Let’s find grass and water first,” Rock said to Sky. “My throat feels like wildfire. And you’ll need your strength.”
“On our way up, there was a stream,” mumbled Silverhorn. “Remember? I think it’s not much farther down the pass.”
Raising her dusty trunk, Sky sniffed the air. Through the heat and grit and the pungent odor of her companions’ bodies, she caught it: the sweet scent of water. Yearning coursed through her, and she turned urgently toward it, Rock and Silverhorn trotting after her.
The stream was not deep, but it was fresh and clear. The elephants sank their trunks into it, snorting with relief; Silverhorn plunged right in, stirring up mud, then flopping and rolling. The water, it seemed to Sky, tasted almost as sweet as the pool on the mountain’s summit. When she and Rock had also rolled, churning the stream to mud and coating their hides, they clambered up and tore ravenously at the straggly thorn trees on the banks.
Silverhorn didn’t seem hungry. Her upper lip toyed with the grass, but she looked tired and tense. When Sky and Rock finally turned from the trees, the rhino cleared her throat, her short tail twitching nervously.
Sky tried to harden her heart. “You wanted to tell us what happened,” she reminded the rhino.
Silverhorn took a deep breath. “I hated what Stronghide was planning,” she moaned. “I didn’t know what to do. He said we all had to help—we had to take revenge on Great Mother for all the years of humiliation we rhinos had suffered. That’s what he called it,” she added hurriedly. “I never felt humiliated. And some others in our crash, they said they wouldn’t do it either.”
Sky’s heart ached for what might have been, if the rhinos had only held fast to their refusal. “So what happened?”
“Stronghide . . . he said he had a destiny. That anyone who stood against him was his enemy, and the enemy of all rhinos. He threatened to drive us away—if he didn’t kill us first.” Silverhorn’s voice sank to a whisper. “So I just left. Some of the others fell in with his plan, but I slipped away in the night. I didn’t want to murder anyone.”
Sky swallowed hard. “You didn’t warn Great Mother.”
“It was the wrong decision,” groaned Silverhorn. “I should have. But I didn’t want to betray my crash, any more than I wanted to kill the Great Parent.”
“This humiliation story is nonsense.” Rock frowned. “So what if rhinos have never been the Great Parent? Nor have any of the other animals. Why did Stronghide really want revenge?”
“It was something that happened to him.” Silverhorn’s head drooped lower. “Seasons ago, Stronghide and his mate had a calf, a little female named Brighteyes. Everybody loved Brighteyes, she was so funny and sweet, and Stronghide loved her more than anything.” She swallowed. “But she got sick. Really sick. Even though he was so proud, even though he couldn’t stand the elephants, Stronghide went to Great Mother and begged her to help.”
“I’m sure she did,” said Sky, her heart clenching. “Didn’t she?”
Silverhorn shook her heavy head. “She told him she couldn’t. That if the Great Spirit decided Brighteyes’s life was over, it would end. And Brighteyes did grow weaker, and she died.” Silverhorn stared at her feet, shuffling the dust. “That’s why Stronghide hated Great Mother.”
Sky remembered Moon’s small lifeless body, and her breath caught in grief. She’d have given anything to save him. How would she have felt if she’d begged for help and been refused?
“Great Mother would have saved Brighteyes if she could,” she told Silverhorn desperately.
The rhino nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’m sure that’s true, Sky. And I think Stronghide knew it too, deep down. I don’t believe he ever would have thought of killing her. Not on his own.”
“I bet he would,” said Rock testily. “Haven’t you heard? Stronghide is Great Father now.”
Sky and Silverhorn turned to him in shock.
“It’s true,” Rock said. “This isn’t about revenge or what happened to his calf. It sounds to me like he wanted Great Mother dead so he could take her place.”
Outrage flooded Sky. “Great Mother’s been replaced by her murderer?”
“She has indeed.” Rock shook his head in disgust. “Why would the Great Spirit choose him?”
Sky said grimly, “It didn’t.”
Rock blinked, taken aback. “How do you know?”
Because I’m carrying the Great Spirit, Sky thought. But how can I explain that? “A true Great Parent would never have broken the Code.”
Silverhorn pawed at the ground. “But the old Stronghide—the Stronghide I’ve known all my life—he would never have killed Great Mother. He was always bad-tempered, but he had a good heart. He changed, this last season. That other animal he was plotting with? I’m sure that’s who convinced him to do it.”
Sky remembered her vision, back on the Plain of Our Ancestors—the rhinoceros balanced in the acacia tree as the wind lashed its branches. He had turned his horn to the sun, unaware of his danger, of the branches about to snap and send him crashing to the ground.
Was that rhinoceros Stronghide? Surely it was. This other animal could have learned of his loss of Brighteyes and manipulated his grief, twisting it until Stronghide was convinced Great Mother had to die.
And that creature is the tr
ee. Horror clutched Sky’s heart.
They used Stronghide—and soon they’ll let him fall to his doom.
CHAPTER 26
The rising sun still dallied behind the horizon, a smear of pink and gold at the edge of the purple sky, but already the heat was unrelenting. Fearless’s skin prickled with it. What happened to chilly nights and cool sweet dawns? he wondered wistfully. Have the older lions ever known weather like this?
Mother could have told me. But it’s too late now.
The warm smell of gazelle filled his nose before he saw the herd, grazing a long way off, near the edge of the woods. His shoulder bumped occasionally with Valor’s as they walked, but the two lions didn’t speak. There was nothing more to say.
They had lain curled by their mother’s body all night. Fearless had slept badly, spending wakeful stretches staring at the pale half-moon; any sleep he’d snatched was broken by disturbing dreams. Titan above him, jaws widening for the killing bite. The slip and endless fall from a high branch in Tall Trees, with death waiting for him on the ground. Keen trapped beneath his own paws, terror and grief in his young eyes . . .
He knew from Valor’s drawn face that she’d fared little better. By first light Swift’s body had been stiff and cold. Fearless had nuzzled her face one last time, breathing in the scent he knew as well as his own. He would never smell it again.
And a promise was a promise, especially one given on the point of death: he and Valor had no choice now but to return to Titanpride. Fearless had thought they’d found a new and better home, but overnight it had been lost to them forever. Loyal Oath-breaker.
What had Loyal done? And why had he hidden it from Fearless? Because, a small voice told him, breaking an oath is the worst thing a lion can do . . .
Fearless cleared his throat, his mouth dry. “What do you think Mother meant about Loyal?”
Valor seemed dazed, as if her thoughts were far from Bravelands. “What?”
“What do you think Loyal did that made Mother hate him?”
Valor sighed. She looked exhausted, her whiskers drooping. “I don’t know. And honestly, I don’t care. If Mother thought we should keep our distance, that’s good enough for me. Forget him, Fearless.”