"I'll see you soon," said Gregor, grateful for an out. He headed off to find his friends. If Luxa had taken Boots to the field in the arena, there must be a game or a training session scheduled. He hoped they weren't using the blood balls for target practice. Even on good days, he disliked watching the wax balls burst open, spraying bloodred liquid as the sword blades hit them. At the moment it was a little more violence than he could handle.
When Gregor arrived, he found a much more benign sort of training in progress. The toddlers were learning to fly on bats. At first glance, it looked like little kids were raining from the ceiling. But none of the raindrops ever reached the ground. The bats would fly a toddler high up in the arena and then flip over, letting them fall into the air. The kid might drop five feet or twenty yards before they would be swept up by a second bat and flown back up into the air.
Mareth was directing the exercise. The soldier stood in the center of the field, leaning on a crutch. The doctors had fashioned a prosthetic device made of fishbone and leather for his missing leg, but he was still in the process of learning to use it. Regalia's queen, Luxa, was assisting him, if you could call it that, because at the moment they were both laughing helplessly at the scene above. Mareth was pointing up at Boots, who was trying out the somersault Luxa had been teaching her. When a bat dropped her, she would curl up in a ball and rotate a few times through the air. But inevitably she'd lose control of the move and go careening toward the ground, flapping her arms wildly like they were wings. "Me!" she called out, as if to remind the bats she needed a lift.
"Stay tucked up, Boots!" Luxa called through her laughter. "Hold your knees!"
"I hold my knees!" confirmed Boots. She launched into another somersault that quickly deteriorated into her baby-bird routine. "Me!"
"Almost, Boots! Try once more!" called Luxa encouragingly. Gregor stopped watching the kids and the bats for a moment and just focused on her. He had not gotten used to the sight of Luxa looking happy.
Being stranded in the jungle for three months with her injured bat, Aurora, and a colony of mice had changed Luxa. She was so glad to be home, and her people were almost ecstatic to see her. It was as if for the first time they had recognized how lucky they were to have this twelve-year-old girl on deck as a ruler. Luxa would not have the full powers of a queen until she was sixteen, but at twelve she had great influence and could now cast votes at the council meetings where policy was decided. While she was stubborn and gave the council fits with her attitude, Luxa was smart, strong, and unquestionably brave. A mutual appreciation had blossomed between the young queen and her subjects.
This all contributed to Luxa's happiness, but Gregor knew the real source of her joy was Hazard, her six-year-old Halflander cousin, with his lime-green eyes and black curls, who had been discovered living in the jungle. When his father, Hamnet, had been killed by an army of ants, Hazard had been orphaned. Luxa had brought him back to Regalia, and true to her word, it was as if they were now brother and sister. He lived with her in the royal chambers, ate with her, followed her like a puppy. And Luxa had allowed herself to love him.
Gregor spotted Hazard flipping off a bat high over his head. Hazard was older than most of the kids, but riding on bats was still a new skill for him. While the boy was allowed to participate in flying exercises, Luxa had strictly forbidden anyone to train him in weapons. His father's dying wish had been for Hazard to be anything but a warrior, and Luxa had promised to fulfill it. While the other kids his age studied combat training, Hazard was developing his already extraordinary talent with languages. Ordinarily, the Regalians made no effort to learn other creatures' tongues. But Hazard had been raised in the jungle, where he'd tried to speak to anything that would speak to him. He'd come to Regalia with a fluency in Lizard and an ability to get by in several other animal languages. Vikus, who was Hazard's grandfather as well as Luxa's, had arranged for a group of tutors. Showing far more patience with the quick, willing Hazard than he ever displayed with Gregor, Ripred was teaching him to squeak in Rat. Temp, the cockroach who had rescued Boots from several disasters, taught both Hazard and the "princess" the clicking dialect of the crawlers. And Purvox, a beautiful red spider, had been shipped in to tutor him in her strange vibrating means of communication. In his spare time, Hazard would try to talk with the bats, although some of their sounds were simply too high-pitched for human ears.
As he walked toward his friends, a voice behind Gregor purred, "Jump." He took one step and leaped as high as he could in the air, stretching his legs out to the sides. The next second he was riding on Ares's back. Gregor always felt a sense of security with Ares. They were bonds, a human-bat team who had taken an oath to defend each other to the death. And after facing a string of impossible difficulties together, they were real friends, too.
"How's it going, man?" Gregor asked.
"Well. It goes well," said Ares.
Gregor ran his hand over Ares's neck. A brand-new layer of glossy black fur was beginning to conceal the purple plague scars. Gregor's bat, who had been the first victim of the plague, had not only managed to survive it but had also made an extraordinary recovery. Within a few weeks of receiving the cure, he'd been begging the doctors to discharge him from the hospital. Afraid that he would fly back to his remote cave outside of Regalia before he had fully healed, the doctors released him into Luxa's custody. So now he lived with her and Hazard and Aurora, in the royal wing of the palace. Gregor thought Ares probably preferred being with his friends to living in that lonely cave anyway.
"How soon do we eat?" said Gregor as his stomach rumbled. Mareth whistled, bringing the bats and their small charges down to the field.
"It must be now, for the training ends," said Ares.
Ten minutes later, they were seated around a big table loaded with food. Besides Gregor, Luxa, Hazard, Boots, Ares, and Aurora, there was a young bat that Hazard had taken a shine to. Thalia. She was a soft peach color with white streaks like a tabby cat, only about half-grown, and had a love of jokes that Gregor found unsettling. He had modified some Overland jokes for her. "Why did the bat cross the river? To get to the other side." Something like that could make her laugh for, no kidding, ten minutes.
Today he told the old standby: "Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine." Unfortunately, she'd had a mouthful of food when the punch line came and nearly choked to death as she cracked up.
"Do you think she'll grow out of that?" Gregor whispered to Luxa.
"I hope so. Hazard has his heart set on bonding with her," she whispered back.
Gregor ate a hearty meal of grilled fish, marinated mushrooms, and fresh bread. He contributed little to the conversation, though, because he kept wondering about Ripred and the Bane. After dinner, when the others went back to Luxa's apartment to play games, Gregor said he had to make a trip to the museum. He really just wanted some time to think. Despite Ripred's warning, Gregor's impulse was to track down Vikus and tell him everything. But it was true that Vikus might go to the council. And most of the council members were jerks. If only he could find out what was in the prophecy Ripred had mentioned ...
Nerissa! Gregor spun on his heel, heading away from the museum and to the stone room that housed Sandwich's prophecies. Nerissa spent much of her time there. If anyone could tell Gregor what awaited him, it was that girl. She was part of the royal family, Luxa's cousin, and had even worn the crown for the few months when everyone thought Luxa had been killed by the rats. But unlike her resilient cousin, Nerissa was thin to the point of emaciation, psychologically fragile, and had the ability to see glimpses of the future ... sometimes. She was no more able to control her visions than Gregor was to manage his powers to fight as a rager. She often had no idea if an incident she saw was about to occur in an hour or had happened a century before. Still, when she was right, she was dead right. As he had hoped, Gregor found Nerissa sitting alone in the prophecy room. Her physical state had deteriorated back to her prequeen days. Long tangled hair fell to her waist, and she was huddled in layers of mismatched clothing. "Greetings, Overlander," she said with her ghostly smile.