The War of the Ember Read online

  “Octavia, old friend,” he said. “It has been much too long.”

  “Yes, Hoke. Too many years.”

  “I understand that our dearest comrade Lyze, or Ezylryb as you called him in the Southern Kingdoms, has died.”

  Octavia nodded her head slowly.

  “Now what brings you here?”

  “War,” Octavia said simply.

  “I have heard no news of war. I only hear of good things about your king, the one who seized the ember.”

  “Yes, and he is good and he has the ember in his power—for now.”

  A quiver went through Hoke’s long slender body. He was draped over a pinnacle of ice that jutted out nearly perpendicular from the rock. “For now? Explain! Tell me!”

  And so Octavia began to plead eloquently, hoping that Hoke would agree to support the guardians with a squadron of Kielian snakes. “Hoke, you trained the original stealth force of Kielian snakes. It was Lyze who recruited you for the War of the Ice Claws. And now I ask you in the name of Lyze and all the values that noble owl embodied, join us.”

  “I am surely too old,” Hoke replied.

  “Your body is old but not your mind.”

  Hoke wound himself tighter around the ice pinnacle. “Rest assured. You will have all that you need. The elite force commanded by my grandson, Harlo, will be dispatched to the Southern Kingdoms. And you say the king has gone to seek out Moss?”

  Octavia nodded.

  Hoke slithered down the pinnacle and settled himself on a rock surface. “It’s interesting. I saw a polar bear who frequents this area making her way northward, north and west as if she was going up the Firth of Fangs. Odd time of year to see polar bears out and about. However, I don’t suppose the polar bears know yet of this business.”

  “Oh, but they do!” Octavia exclaimed. “A puffin informed them. It was actually a puffin who came and told us about Nyra and the Striga in the Ice Narrows.”

  “A puffin!” Hoke hissed in amazement.

  “Yes, our reaction as well, but apparently this one is somewhat brighter.”

  “An intelligent puffin!” Hoke waggled his head slowly in a wonder. “That would be a sight to see!”

  At the very moment Hoke was marveling over the rumored intelligence of Dumpy, forty puffins perched on the ridge where puffins of the Ice Narrows lived. “Something big is coming,” Dumpy addressed them. “I mean, really big.” Dumpy’s eyes widened as he tried to convey the bigness, the seriousness of what he was going to explain.

  “How big? Big as your butt?” one puffin shouted.

  “Knock it off,” said another puffin.

  “It was a joke,” said the first.

  “Well, it’s not funny, so knock it off.” At which point the jokester raised a webbed foot, smacked herself in the head, and succeeded in knocking herself off the ledge into the churning waters. There was a swell of raucous puffin laughter. Dumpy blinked, then shut his eyes for several seconds. This was going to be difficult. He had to figure out a way to catch these birds’ ever-wandering attention.

  Dumpy opened his eyes slowly and spoke carefully and distinctly, but in a low voice so they had to lean forward to hear him. “If you be quiet and listen, I will tell you a very big secret.”

  “What’s that? What’s that?” They pressed close to him, looking eager and alert.

  “The secret is that I have been to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.”

  “Oooh,” they all sighed.

  “I have spoken to their king.”

  There were more oohs.

  “I have spoken to the king’s counselors.”

  “What’s a counselor?” someone whispered.

  “An ornament,” another said.

  Dumpy forged ahead. “And the secret that I have to tell you is that we are not nearly so dumb as we have always thought. Indeed, we each have a brain.”

  “We do?” It was the Chubster who spoke now. “Are you sure, Dumpy?”

  “Yes, I am sure. And if you use it, it gets better and better, and you get smarter and smarter. And I am going to show you how to use it. Now what do we know best in all the world?”

  “Fish,” said a tiny little female named Popo.

  “Right you are. See, Popo used her brain. And what do we do most?’”

  “Fish,” said another puffin.

  “And what happens when we leave a fish out for a long time without our eating it?” Dumpy asked.

  “It freezes stiff and you can almost break your beak on it.”

  “Mummy says no playing with frozen fish. They’re dangerous,” Popo piped up.

  “Exactly, Popo.” Dumpy paused. “Dangerous like swords. Like daggers! They could even be weapons.”

  “Weapons!” they exclaimed. They all knew somewhat dimly about weapons. Some of them had seen owls fly through the Ice Narrows with their battle claws gleaming.

  “Yes,” Dumpy went on, “and the big thing I was trying to tell you about—the big thing that is coming is bad owls. The Guardians of the great tree are going to fight the bad owls and they need all the help they can get. We are going to help them.”

  “But Dumpy, aren’t we just too darned dumb?” the Chubster said.

  “No!” Dumpy exploded. “There will be no more D word!”

  “D word?” they all said, for not one of them had any notion of letters, their sounds, or what they might signify.

  “No more saying the word ‘dumb,’” Dumpy explained. “You are going to become fighting puffins. Fighting the good fight for the noble owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. We can do it. But you must believe that you can think. To fish is to be a puffin. To build an ice hollow is to be a puffin, but to think is also to be a puffin.”

  And thus it was that the Dump Brigade began, not just named for its leader Dumpy the Fifteenth, but for three out of four of the puffins, as well, who made up that first brigade and who were also named Dumpy. And their first exercise was target practice with frozen fish. They soon found that the tiny slim capelin were easier to launch and more precise in their trajectory than the rather cumbersome bluescales. Yes, “trajectory.” The puffins did start to speak in such terms as trajectory, velocity, and the speed of the airflow around frozen capelins, bluescales, and herring hurled at distant targets.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A Summit Meeting

  We think that their target date for this…this vile hatching is the night of the lunar eclipse,” said Otulissa. With Cleve at her side, she was perched on the Ice Dagger, which jutted out from the depths of the Everwinter Sea. She and Cleve were telling Coryn what they’d learned in the Ice Narrows.

  Coryn felt his gizzard quake. Owls had been talking forever about the peculiarities of young chicks who hatched on the night of a lunar eclipse. He himself had been born on such a night, as had his mother, and as had Hoole. In the back of his mind, a vague notion had been stirring. It was becoming clearer as Otulissa and Cleve related to him their discovery of the remnants of a strange egg in the Ice Narrows, and the horrible massacre at the Gray Rocks, and finally the alarming encounter with blue owls in the canyon of the Ice Talons. In an all-out war the Guardians might succeed in destroying the eggs and preventing the reentry of nachtmagen into the world. But the problem of the ember would remain and the ember itself, with its strange unfathomable powers, seemed to attract its own kind of poison from the world and the creatures in it.

  Even though he was deep in thought, Coryn followed what Otulissa was saying. “We have until the eclipse. We don’t know exactly where the eggs are but we have a pretty good idea. Cleve and I feel that if Nyra and the Striga could be lured away even, temporarily, we could destroy the eggs. We are sure more blue owls are being brought in to guard them but they are not there yet. I spoke to you about how we had encountered some kraals and they were an invaluable source of information on this. Cleve has learned much in his practice with Tengshu. I think he and I could handle whoever might be sent in to sit the eggs.”

  Coryn felt a stirring dee
p in his gizzard. It was almost as if he could feel glints deep within it and then there dawned a sudden brightness in his head, an illumination in his brain. “Well, of course!”

  “Of course what?”

  “The way to get them away—‘lure’ them as you say—is with the ember.”

  “But aren’t we trying to get the ember to the Middle Kingdom? Hide the ember? Not put it out there as bait!” Otulissa was astonished by Coryn’s line of thinking.

  “Otulissa.” Coryn looked at her steadily then swung his head toward Cleve. “The ember is the only way! Believe me. It is our only chance for getting at those eggs. Besides, I am far from certain that Gup Theosang will give permission to hide the ember in his kingdom. While we wait for word, it will serve as bait.”

  “He’s right, Otulissa,” Cleve said.

  “But how do we do it?”

  “We will start with rumors of the ember.”

  “Rumors of it where?” Otulissa asked. There was doubt in her voice.

  “In the Beyond. That’s where it came from…” Coryn broke off speaking. He had started to say, “And that is where it belongs,” but he stopped.

  “It’s very risky, I think,” Otulissa began, “using the ember this way…but…but…”

  “Hagsfiends are risky,” Coryn said. “Nachtmagen is risky. It must be done,” Coryn said resolutely.

  “Are you sure, Coryn?” Otulissa pressed. “You are risking everything.”

  “But what will any of us have in a world with hagsfiends flying about?”

  He turned now to Cleve. He did not want to argue this point any longer. “You said that after you discovered the massacre at the Gray Rocks and your engagement with the blue owls in the Ice Narrows, you came across some kraals?”

  “Yes, and gadfeathers. They had witnessed the carnage left by the massacre, and helped the few survivors get away. Needless to say, they are furious—and ready to fight.”

  Coryn’s dark eyes glittered. “Could the two of you fly back to the great tree? Tell Madame Plonk that I would like her to fly to the Northern Kingdoms, to the places where the gadfeathers gather. See if she could muster a company of gadfeather owls, and kraals as well.”

  “I don’t know if the gadfeathers can fight, Coryn,” Otulissa said. “I mean, they have no experience. They sing.”

  “They are angry, Otulissa. Their own kind have been slaughtered. Don’t underestimate passion. The passion they put into their songs can be put into combat. And anybody from the Northern Kingdoms can handle a short blade.

  “So,” Coryn continued. “Not only must you tell Madame Plonk to seek the help of the gadfeathers, but I have a special mission for Doc Finebeak.”

  “Crows? You want him to recruit crows?” Otulissa asked.

  “Yes!” Doc Finebeak had enjoyed a long and productive relationship with the very birds that most owls feared. Crows. He was revered by crows. “But more. I want him to go to Ambala.”

  Coryn did not even need to finish the sentence. Otulissa knew exactly what he intended. If the Mysticus had instigated the turn in the Battle of the Book in the canyonlands the Greenowls of Ambala had turned the Battle of Balefire Night when the Striga and his followers had been driven from the tree with their help.

  “And now, I must be off,” Coryn said.

  “But where are you going?” Otulissa asked.

  “It’s better that you not know for now, Otulissa.”

  “Really?” There was a plaintive note in her voice. Otulissa was as close to Coryn as any owl in the great tree except Soren. It was she who had found him alone, despondent, an outcast in the Beyond. It had been Otulissa, a master collier herself, who had started to teach the young owl the fine art of colliering at the Sacred Ring of volcanoes.

  Coryn was a natural. She had never seen an owl so quick to learn. Otulissa had watched him retrieve the Ember of Hoole. Many had tried to retrieve the ember in the thousand years since Hoole had restored it to the volcanoes, but none had succeeded. Not until Coryn had come. Thus a special bond had been forged between the Spotted Owl and the young king. Otulissa had been as much of a confidante to Coryn as his uncle Soren.

  Coryn now reached out with the tip of his port wing and touched her shoulder softly. “Don’t worry, old friend. It’s better you not know.”

  “Of course.” Otulissa nodded. “Glaux speed, Coryn!” she murmured as she watched him spread his wings and lift off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  At the Wolf’s Fang

  One by one the owls had dropped out of the fast-scudding striated clouds into the mist that swirled around a rock that looked like a wolf’s fang on the far western edge of the Sea of Vastness. But now the rock was almost completely obscured by fog. Perfect Ezylryb weather, Soren thought. But Soren did not need visual cues to find the Wolf’s Fang. Tilting his head this way, then that, expanding and contracting his facial muscles to scoop up the finer nuances of the breaking waves as they encountered an obstacle in their course, he was able to triangulate the exact position of this rock entirely from sound clues. And, of course, he had Gylfie with him. The Elf Owl need not see the sun or the stars. The celestial charts were emblazoned on her brain. She could fly blindly through any weather and sense precisely how many points she was from, say, the port claw of the Little Raccoon constellation, on a night when most birds would be thoroughly confused. Soren, however, was relieved to know that the others had already arrived at the Wolf’s Fang because he could hear the brush of the wind through their feathers.

  He was full of hope now. Surely Tengshu would have gotten permission from the H’ryth for the passage of the ember. But uppermost in his mind at this moment before landing on the Wolf’s Fang was how to tell Twilight the unbelievable news that he had two brothers who were very much alive. He had asked Tavis and Cletus not to accompany them to the Wolf’s Fang, but rather to remain at the remote inlet where the Sea of Vastness furrowed in along a desolate stretch of the coastline. He needed to prepare Twilight for the meeting. But he was not sure how to do this. Tavis and Cletus had agreed to hang back but they were more than eager, indeed, almost feverish to meet their long-lost younger brother.

  When Soren, Gylfie, and Wensel arrived, they were surprised to see not only Ruby, Martin, Fritha, and Digger, but Tengshu as well. Almost immediately, Soren sensed the despair that swirled as thickly as the fog around the rock.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Tengshu shook his head slowly.

  “You mean we can’t take it there?”

  Tengshu sighed. “Correct. Theosang will not accept the ember. And that is not all. There’s another problem, Soren.”

  “It’s awful,” Martin muttered.

  “What is it? Tell me!” Soren was almost hopping up and down. His gizzard twitched madly.

  “There have been more defections from the Dragon Court,” Tengshu said quietly.

  “What?” Soren blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  Tengshu quickly explained. Soren listened and nodded as each dreadful piece of information was revealed. He was beginning to learn what Otulissa, Cleve, and Coryn already knew. Finally, he spoke when Tengshu had finished. “So what you are telling me is that not only do we have no hope of sequestering this ember far away in a safe refuge in the Middle Kingdom, but by every indication these Dragon Court owls have been recruited by the Striga who has, as we know, joined forces with Nyra?”

  The owls nodded.

  Soren sighed. “What could be worse?”

  And it was only seconds later that Primrose dropped out of the sky with a message clasped in her beak. “It’s urgent,” she said, giving it to Soren.

  “It’s in code. Gylfie, you’re more fluent with the code than I am.”

  They unfurled the scroll and with Twilight anchoring one end and Digger the other, Gylfie hunched over the message.

  “It’s direct from Coryn. Well, the good news is that Coryn, for his own reasons, feels we should not under any circumstances take the ember to
the Mountain of Time in the Middle Kingdom but…” She stopped translating abruptly.

  “But what?” Twilight asked. Gylfie’s eyes, normally bright sunny as a day, darkened. “There are hagsfiends aborning—it will happen on the night of the lunar eclipse. To stop it we must use the ember as a lure, so the eggs will be left unguarded and can then be destroyed.”

  “Of course!” Tengshu exclaimed. “That’s why the Dragon Court owls are here.” Tengshu paused. No one said a word. “You see, these Dragon Court owls are poor fighters, but they can be used for something much more dangerous.”

  “What’s that?” Soren whispered.

  “Broodies,” Tengshu said hoarsely. “Broodies to hatch hagsfiends, to bring back nachtmagen. It was all there in the second section of the Theo Papers, called The Obscura. Perhaps not stated directly, for that is the nature of the writings in the ‘Obscura.’ Reading the material is similar to conversing with scrooms—incomplete, many possible meanings. But there was an intimation that there could be a time when hagsfiends might return. Within the flabby gizzards of those Dragon Court owls are the seeds long dormant of…of…of…”

  “Hagsfiends,” Digger said. “The Dragon Court owls were, you think, in earlier generations the hagsfiends from the Kingdom of N’yrthghar, the ones we read about in the legends?”

  “No one knows for sure,” Tengshu replied.

  “Theo did,” Digger said.

  “Perhaps,” Tengshu replied quietly.

  “He used the lure of the promise of everlasting power, splendor, and riches to lure them to the Dragon Court. And now we are to use the lure of the ember to prevent the rise of hagsfiends,” Soren said.

  “So it seems.” Tengshu nodded.

  “So it says, right here,” Gylfie said, looking up from the coded message. “And there is one more thing. A slink melf is being dispatched by Coryn to the Ice Talons.”

  “A slink melf?” Twilight said. “You mean an assassination squadron?”