Ares awoke after about three hours, famished. He went down to the river and came back with a large fish, not one of the flesh-eating kind. The Bane awoke and wolfed down fish with the bat while Gregor scraped the mold off a piece of cheese and finished the last of the bread.
While they ate, he bounced his plan off Ares. "Okay, I have an idea about what to do with the Bane."
"I am listening," said Ares.
"This tunnel, it leads back to Ripred's nest," said Gregor.
"Does it?" said Ares.
"Yeah, remember? Twitchtip said his nest was where we first met him. And we first met him at the other end of this tunnel," said Gregor.
"Oh, yes, after we had fought the spinners," said Ares.
"Right, so I say we go find Ripred and give him the Bane and let him deal with it," said Gregor. Ares opened his mouth to object, but Gregor held up his hand. "Wait! Only tell me why we can't do it if you can come up with a better plan."
There was a very, very long pause. "I do not have a better plan, but this one has no possible good endings," said Ares.
"Probably not," said Gregor. "So, should we give it a try?"
CHAPTER 23
Ares insisted Gregor sleep for a few hours. When he woke, they began their trek into the tunnel. It was narrow initially, but soon opened up into a space wide enough for Ares to fly, which was a relief, since Gregor's arms were aching from carrying the Bane.
They stopped to break for a drink at a stream in a cavern.
"Remember you this place?" asked Ares.
"No," said Gregor. "Wait, maybe..." They had stopped here to rest when Ripred was their guide. "Is this where Henry tried to kill Ripred in his sleep?"
"Yes, and you stepped between them," said Ares.
"I couldn't figure out if you knew Henry was going to try to kill him," said Gregor.
"I did not. It was one of many things Henry neglected to mention to me," said Ares. Gregor could tell he didn't want to talk about it anymore.
As they flew on, the Bane began to whimper for its mother again. How bizarre this must all seem to the baby rat. Flying through the air on a bat, being held by a human, knowing something very wrong had happened to its mother. Gregor fed it the rest of the chocolate bar from the Labyrinth. He had one left but decided to save it for a real emergency.
The smell of rotten eggs began to permeate the tunnel, and Gregor knew that they were fast approaching the cavern where they had first encountered the spiders, Treflex and Gox. Ares landed at the entrance, and they went in on foot. The sulfur-scented water still rained down the walls. There, on the floor, was the husk of Treflex's body, all that remained of the spider after his companion, Gox, had drained his insides.
"Want to rest?" asked Gregor.
"Not here," said Ares.
"Good," Gregor said, even though what lay ahead was nasty.
The tunnel dripped the evil-smelling water down on them. Ripred had taken them through it with the idea of concealing their scent from the rats, and they had certainly reeked of rotten eggs when they came out. This trip was, if possible, less comfortable. Gregor had been wearing a hard hat the first trip, which had offered some protection. He had not been injured. He had been eager to find his father instead of dreading the moment when they next met. And he had been carrying Boots on his back, not a rat in his arms.
Poor Ares had ridden on Temp's back before, because the tunnel was so narrow and long. Now he limped along, scraping his wings on stone outcroppings, ducking his head in the eye-stinging drizzle.
In minutes, they were all soaked. The rat mewed miserably. Gregor trudged along, putting one foot in front of the other. He and Ares did not speak the entire time they were in the tunnel, although it was many hours.
When eventually they staggered out of the mouth into open space, Gregor's knees gave way under him and he sat on the ground hard. He expected the Bane, who'd been squirming for most of the trip, to try to run off. Instead, it burrowed up under his shirt and pressed against his chest.
Ares slumped against a rock next to him.
"Are there rats around?" asked Gregor.
"About ten are coming now. But that is what we want, right?" said Ares.
"That is what we want," said Gregor.
Neither of them made any attempt to move as the rats surrounded them. And then, he saw the diagonal scar that split Ripred's face.
"If I had known that you were coming, I'd have fixed the place up," said Ripred.
"Don't bother. We won't be here long. I just came to give you a present," said Gregor.
"For me? You shouldn't have," said Ripred.
"You brought me Twitchtip," said Gregor.
"Not because I expected anything in return," said Ripred. His nose was beginning to move; his eyes fastened on the lump under Gregor's shirt.
"You're getting something, anyway," Gregor said, and pulled up his shirt. The Bane slid out on the floor in front of him. Every rat except Ripred gasped. Seeing another rat, the baby started to run to Ripred, but it jumped back at the violent hiss that issued from his mouth and scurried over to Ares.
"You don't like little kids, do you?" said Gregor. Ripred had hissed at Boots, too.
"Not this one in particular," snarled Ripred. "What's it doing here?"
"I didn't know where else to take it," said Gregor.
"You were supposed to kill it!" said Ripred.
"But I didn't. I brought it to you," said Gregor.
"And what makes you think I won't kill it?" said Ripred.
"I don't think you'd kill a pup," said Gregor.
"Ha!" Ripred said, pacing angrily in a circle. Gregor wasn't sure whether that meant yes or no.
"Okay, how about I don't think you'd kill the Bane? Because if you do, you'll never get the other rats to follow you," said Gregor.
It was lucky he'd been sitting down, because Gregor smacked back onto the rock so fast, he would have cracked his skull open if he'd been standing up. As it was, it hurt plenty.
Ripred pinned him to the ground with one paw as he bared his fangs in Gregor's face. "And have you also thought that, under the circumstances, I might very well kill you?"
Gregor swallowed hard. The answer was yes. But instead of admitting it, he looked Ripred dead in the eye and said, "Okay, but I think I'd better warn you that, if we fight, you've only got a fifty-fifty chance of winning."
"I do?" said Ripred. It was enough to distract him for a second. "And why is that?"
"Because I'm a rager, too," said Gregor.
Ripred began to laugh so hard he fell over on his side. The other rats were laughing, too. Gregor didn't even feel like sitting up. "It's true," he said to the ceiling. "Twitchtip smelled it on me. Ask Ares."
No one asked Ares; they were guffawing too hard. That was one thing you had to give the rats: They enjoyed a good joke. Finally Ripred pulled himself together and swept his tail around, shooing the other rats away. "Go," he said. "Leave them to me."
"All right, Rager," he said when they were gone. "Tell me what happened, and don't leave out any details. I left you after our sorry excuse for an echolocation lesson and —"
"And then I ran into Nerissa," said Gregor. He told Ripred everything: about the fireflies and squid tentacles, about saving Twitchtip at the whirlpool and losing Pandora at the island, about the serpents in the Tankard and taking refuge in the cave. And then he found he couldn't go on.
"Yes, you six were in the cave and what about the others?" asked Ripred.
"They were lost," Ares said, after it was clear Gregor wasn't going to answer. And the bat picked up the story, telling how the remaining group had split. How Twitchtip had led them until she'd collapsed. How Goldshard and Snare had fought. How Gregor had taken the Bane. "And now we are here."
Ripred looked at them thoughtfully. "So, you are. What's left of you," he said. "I am sorry for your losses."
That was the thing about Ripred: One minute he was about to kill you, and the next he seemed to understand it was all you could do n
ot to curl up into a ball and die.
"Just out of curiosity, Gregor, what do you expect me to do with that pup if I don't kill it?" said Ripred.
"I thought you might, you know, kind of raise it. Everyone's so afraid of what it's going to turn into. And if Snare had got hold of it, it probably would've grown up to be a monster. But maybe if you take care of it and stuff, it might turn out okay," said Gregor.
"You thought I'd be its daddy?" said Ripred, as if he hadn't heard right.
"Or, at least its teacher. One of the other rats could be its parent," said Gregor. "Just for, you know, eighteen years, or whatever."
"Ah, here's something you obviously don't know about rats," said Ripred. "That ball of fluff over there will be full grown by the time you've seen another winter."
"But...it's just a baby," said Gregor.
"Only humans grow so slowly," said Ares. "It is one of their great weaknesses. The rest of us in the Underland mature as the rats do. Some even more quickly."
"But how do you teach it everything it has to know?" said Gregor.
"Rats learn faster than humans. And what does it really need to know? To eat, to fight, to find a mate, to hate everyone who is not a rat. It doesn't take long to learn these things," said Ripred.
"You know other things," said Gregor. "About what goes on in the Overland, even."
"Well, I've spent a lot of time in your libraries at night," said Ripred.
"You come up and read books?" asked Gregor.
"Read them, eat them, whatever mood strikes me," he said. "All right, Overlander, you may leave the pup with me. I won't kill it, but I can't promise I can teach it much. And you know, there will be hell to pay in Regalia."
"I don't care," said Gregor. "If they think I'm going to do their dirty work, they can think again."
"That's the stuff, Boy. You're a rager. Don't let them push you around," said Ripred.
"I am a rager," said Gregor sheepishly.
"I know. It's just that there are brand-new ragers, and there are old veteran ragers who have fought in countless wars. And you would be...?" said Ripred.
"The first kind," said Gregor. "And I don't even have a sword."
"How's your echolocation coming along?" asked Ripred.
"It's not," said Gregor. "I stink at it."
"But you'll keep practicing, because you have such unflagging confidence in my judgment," said Ripred.
"Okay, Ripred," Gregor said, too tired to get into an argument about the whole worthless echolocation thing. He stood up. "Are you going to be able to handle it? The Bane, I mean?"
"If it's anything like its mother, I'll have my paws full," said Ripred. "But I'll manage."
Gregor went over and patted the baby on the head. "You take care, you hear?" The Bane nuzzled his hand.
"Give it this, when we're gone," Gregor said, handing Ripred the remaining candy bar. "It'll help. Ready, Ares?"
Ares fluttered forward, and Gregor climbed on his back. "Oh, yeah, and about Twitchtip. You'll let her stay if she makes it back, right?"
"Oh, dear. You haven't become attached to Twitchtip, have you?" said Ripred.
"As rats go, she is among our favorites," said Ares.
Ripred grinned. "She can stay if she can drag her pathetic hide back here. Fly you high, you two."
"Run like the river, Ripred," said Gregor.
As they flew off, he looked back over his shoulder. The Bane was sitting next to Ripred, eating the candy bar, paper and all.
Maybe it would work out in the end.
CHAPTER 24
After they had flown for a while, Gregor remembered that Ares hadn't rested after the long trip through the tunnel. "You want to find a place and take a nap?" he asked. "I can keep watch." But even as he spoke, he yawned. He hadn't had much sleep, either.
"I am strangely wakeful," said Ares. "Why do you not sleep while we fly? I will rouse you when I have need of rest."
"Okay, thanks." Gregor stretched out on Ares's back. The fur was damp, and it smelled of rotten eggs, but Gregor's clothes were in no better condition. Beneath the fur was the warmth of Ares's body. He closed his eyes and let oblivion take over.
Ares let him sleep about six hours before waking him. They camped in a niche high in the rocks of a cavern. The bat conked out immediately after providing Gregor with a few raw fish.
Gregor picked up one of the fish and ripped off a strip of skin with his teeth. Then he took a bite of the cold meat. Howard had always cleaned the fish with a knife, cutting neat pieces away from the bones. Gregor didn't have a knife or even a sword now. And what did it matter, anyway? Still, hunched over his fish on the stone ledge, he felt like he was in a time warp. He'd become a Neanderthal man or something, tearing into raw flesh, just trying to get the life-sustaining calories into his body. That must have been a hard life. Of course, his own wasn't exactly a picnic.
He thought longingly of rich, fatty foods. Mrs. Cormaci's lasagna, loaded with cheese and sauce and noodles. Chocolate cake with thick frosting. Mashed potatoes and gravy. He ripped off a stubborn piece of fish with a grunt. It didn't take long, he thought, to erase hundreds of thousands of years of change if you were hungry.
Gregor wiped his hands on his pants and leaned back against the stone. He found himself staring into his flashlight beam, drawn toward the one bit of light in this huge, dark place. He was down to his last set of batteries. If they ran out, he'd be entirely dependent on Ares to get him out. Who was he kidding? He was already entirely dependent on the bat. In fact, it didn't really seem fair. Ares kept them alive about ninety percent of the time, anyway. Gregor didn't feel like he'd really been holding up his end of this bond thing.
"So, stop staring at your flashlight and keep an eye out for trouble!" he thought. Disgusted with himself, he swept the beam over the surrounding rocks. Nothing new. Still, he had to get better about being on watch. Howard had said there were tricks to keeping your mind alert. Gregor did his multiplication tables for a while; that seemed to help. Next he tried to remember the capitals of all fifty states. But that only lasted for, well, fifty states. Finally, he forced himself to calculate something he'd been consciously ignoring: the number of days he'd been in the Underland.
It was almost impossible to figure out. He'd been in Regalia less than two days before they'd set sail on the Waterway, he was pretty sure of that. He thought someone had said the trip to the Labyrinth was about five days. Then another day or two until he met up with Ripred? Nine days? Ten?
His family must be a complete wreck. He would be coming home right around Christmas. Without Boots. Forever.
Gregor went back to his multiplication tables.
When Ares woke up, there was more raw fish and then they took off again. They followed the same pattern for a day or two. Gregor sleeping while Ares flew, Ares sleeping while Gregor kept watch, until finally Gregor awoke to the words, "Overlander, we are here."
They were not moving. Gregor sat up and rubbed his eyes. The light was brighter than any he'd encountered for days. He slid off Ares's back onto a polished stone floor and looked around. They were in the High Hall. It was completely empty. Somewhere, not too far away, he could hear music playing.
"Where is everybody?" asked Gregor.
"I do not know. But if there is music, there must be some sort of gathering," replied Ares. "I believe it is coming from the Throne Room."
They shuffled along a few corridors and came to the doorway of a huge room that Gregor had never seen before. The floor sloped down slightly, like a movie theater, and was filled with rows and rows of stone benches. The place was packed with bats and humans, who were dressed a lot fancier than usual. Many people held objects wrapped in cloth and tied with ribbons. Presents, maybe? Everyone's attention was on a large stone throne at the far end of the room. Nerissa was sitting on the throne.
They had cleaned her up for the occasion. Her unkempt hair had been worked into elaborate braids and piled on top of her head. A jewel-trimmed gown hung
loosely off her bony shoulders. Vikus stood behind her. He was reciting some sort of speech as he lowered a large gold crown onto her head. It was hard to imagine either Nerissa or Vikus looking sadder than they did at this moment.
"What's going on?" whispered Gregor.
"A coronation. They are crowning Nerissa queen," Ares said softly.
Luxa had been right. If she died, Nerissa would be crowned, and not Vikus, and his family. At least, not yet.
"So I guess Howard and those guys got back," said Gregor. How else would they know that Luxa was dead?
"So it would seem," said Ares.
If Mareth had survived, he would be down in the hospital, but Howard and Andromeda should be here. Gregor looked around the hall but couldn't find them.
Vikus finished speaking just as he settled the crown on Nerissa's head and released it. Her thin neck bent forward under the weight, and Gregor thought how ill-suited she was to be queen of this violent, warring place. Whether she was mentally unstable or actually could see the future wasn't the issue. The girl was too weak to hold up her head with a crown on it. The image of Luxa shoving back her gold band flashed before Gregor's eyes. Whether she wanted to be queen or not, there was no doubt in his mind she would have been up to the job. But she was gone now.
Howard was right: They should have made Vikus king. Vikus would make a good leader; he was smart and diplomatic. And he did not seem like he would let power go to his head.
As Nerissa braced her hands on the arms of the throne and managed to raise her head, her eyes caught Gregor's. Something registered on her face, and then she fainted dead away, tumbling to the floor. The crown hit the stone with a clank and then rolled off.
There was a big commotion. A stretcher appeared almost immediately, and Nerissa was carried away. There was a lot of head shaking and murmuring in the crowd from the Underlanders who had probably been opposed to Nerissa being made queen in the first place. Then somebody spotted Gregor and Ares. They had been standing in the doorway, unnoticed, since everyone had been watching the crowning. Now hundreds of faces turned their way and began to shout questions. Gregor could see Vikus waving for him to come down. This wasn't really how he would have chosen to reveal the story about the Bane. He had planned to tell Vikus, alone, and then head home. But that option was gone.
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