The War of the Ember Read online

  “I still don’t see why we must quicken the eggs here. Why not leave them there in the kraals’ territory?”

  “Too exposed. The land is bare and windswept. These eggs need to be brooded out of the wind in proper schneddenfyrrs to quicken. No puffins here and no polar bears because the fishing is poor. But the old Ice Cliff Palace is the perfect place to brood these eggs. The broodies will sit on them, keep them warm, and so will we. We’ll help them. But we must do this in shifts. For some of us must be ready to defend the eggs, in case there are intruders, like before. Soon it will be too late to move them.”

  “So you say.” Nyra did not quite understand this, but she had agreed to it.

  “Some say…” The Striga’s voice seemed to creak as if he were carefully measuring the weight of each word. “Some say that we owls of the Dragon Court were once hagsfiends.”

  A charge shot through Nyra’s gizzard like a bolt of lightning. The Striga continued. “That Theo created the court to disempower hagsfiends by smothering them in luxury and counterfeit power—to make us weak.

  “Did it ever occur to you, Nyra, that you and I might share a heritage?”

  Nyra blinked.

  “Look at your feathers, my dear. Look how they have darkened. See their ragged edges. You look no more like a Barn Owl than I do a Spotted Owl. We have lost our definition as an owl species.”

  Where is he going with this talk? Nyra wondered.

  “Therefore,” the Striga continued, “I think we might assume that we are on the brink of a new possibility.” He glanced down fondly at the eggs, which seemed to have darkened in the few minutes since they had arrived. “Together we could realize this possibility.”

  “Together? Is this a proposal?”

  “Let’s just call it an experiment.”

  How romantic! Nyra thought derisively, but she held her tongue. He wanted to be her mate, yet she knew that ultimately this blue owl was her enemy.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A Trace of Doubt

  Coryn had not been idle since the Band had left and the mission to remove the ember from the Palace of Mists had commenced. Soren had devised an ingenious plan for dispatching the ember to the Middle Kingdom, if the H’ryth agreed. But Coryn needed to do more—he needed to devise a mighty strategy for smashing the combined forces of Nyra and the Striga, for those two were not settling down to raise a family but to conjure an army from hagsmire itself. So Coryn had plunged into reading every account he could find of past wars that the Guardians had fought. He analyzed battle strategies, the deployment of forces, and the use of NCWs—Non-Clawed Weaponry. He even reread the legends for the battle lore. Coryn sensed, as had Soren, that it was not a battle but a war they were heading into. Yes, it would be wonderful if they could get the ember to safety. But what did that mean finally? Could the ember ever truly be safe? Unless…He did not finish the thought.

  He suddenly felt the need of company and summoned Mrs. Plithiver to his hollow.

  “Ah, Mrs. P., good to see you,” he said when she arrived.

  “Always my pleasure, sir.” She made a waggling little dip with her rose-colored head.

  “Mrs. P., can I offer you some milkberry tea?”

  “Oh no, sir. No, thank you.” Mrs. Plithiver was an old-school nest-maid snake. She did not believe that servants should indulge in such liberties as dining at the same table as their masters and mistresses.

  “You had something to discuss, sir?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Plithiver, I wish you would just call me Coryn.” It had taken Coryn forever to stop her from addressing him as “Your Majesty.”

  “Yes, Coryn.” Just the manner in which she said his name made it sound like Your Majesty.

  “Mrs. P., I have been reading Ezylryb’s account of the War of Fire and Ice. I found the part about owlipoppen and how they were used to dupe the enemy amazing.”

  “Yes, very effective, sir…I mean, Coryn.”

  “I was wondering how they ever made so many of the little dolls.”

  “Oh, it was Audrey’s doing. She is head of the weavers’ guild, although all of us helped out.”

  They sipped tea in silence for some minutes. Mrs. P. sensed that he simply needed quiet company and his talk of owlipoppen was of no import. She saw him glance more than once at the flames in his grate.

  A small thrill went though Mrs. P. when she realized her company was essential to him. She had worried that when the others had gone off he might feel left behind and sink into the gollymopes. Coryn was an owl whose gizzard had a melancholy turn. Mrs. P., like all blind nest-maid snakes, had developed her other sensibilities to a level of extreme refinement, and she was relieved to detect in Coryn no melancholy at all during the last few nights, but a new energy, a concentration, and a resolve. And yet, did she not sense just now, as she slithered from the hollow while Coryn stepped over to poke the fire in the grate, a trace of doubt hovering somewhere in his gizzard?

  Small flames leaped up, casting shadows throughout the hollow, but Coryn kept his eyes focused on the rich central planes of one flame in particular. He knew he would not find any answers to his questions. The flames rarely yielded definitive answers. They could only suggest possibilities: truths, but confusing ones. He remembered his very first experiences in looking into a fire and realizing that there was some kind of meaning hidden there. It was in the flames over his father’s bones that he had first seen the shape and the flickering colors of the Ember of Hoole. Of course, at the time he did not know the meaning of what he’d seen. But later those same flames revealed a truth he half suspected—that his father, Kludd, had not been murdered savagely by Soren, as his mother had told him, but had fallen in battle, and that Twilight had delivered the fatal wound in a war that was entirely the fault of the Pure Ones. Nyra had told him nothing but lies—lies about his father, lies about the Pure Ones, and most of all, lies about his uncle and the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. Now, as he stared into the fire once again, he knew he was looking for simple answers to questions he could not help asking. What, he thought, shall I do if the H’ryth refuses to let us bring the ember to the owlery at the Mountain of Time? What then?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Splendid Isolation—No More!

  You expect us to give refuge to this ember?”

  Tengshu had never seen the H’ryth in such a rage. The stream of green light flowing from his eyes, which signified deep wisdom, had intensified. “Do you know what has happened since you’ve been gone? What I have just this morning been informed of?” The plumage on the H’ryth’s head had been closely clipped except for the single blue feather that stood straight up. This was the identifying mark of all spiritual guides, the pikyus in the owlery. The feather quivered with his rage.

  “No, honorable Gup Theosang. Enlighten me.” “An alert page from the Dragon Court has just discovered that a score of owls has fled.”

  “What?” Tengshu felt a quaking deep in his gizzard.

  “They used the same strategy as the perfidious Orlando.” The H’ryth’s voice, which was usually smooth, was rasping.

  “Self de-featheration?”

  “Yes, and undoubtedly there were some accomplices. Two, possibly three, lower-echelon servants have gone with them.”

  Tengshu was aghast. He closed his eyes. “I am deeply sorry. I should not have abandoned my post at the Wind’s Gates.”

  Gup Theosang’s wings sagged a bit as he perched on the branch of petrified wood in the hollow at the very highest point in the Mountain of Time, a place known as the Hollow of Supreme Concentration. “It is not your fault. They would have found some other route to the River of Wind.”

  “Perhaps, but my qui lines might have detected their track, some remnant feather from their flight.”

  Gup Theosang was an owl of great empathy. “I do not need you wallowing in remorse. I need your brain, Tengshu. You are a sage. These owls undoubtedly will join Orlando, who now calls himself ‘the Striga’ as I understand. There is no telling wha
t they will do. But eventually they will come back here and wreak havoc. We must prepare. I knew it was a bad thing when the Guardians came here. For more than a thousand years we had lived untouched by owls from any other worlds, kingdoms. Splendid isolation!”

  He calls it “splendid,” this isolation, Tengshu thought. But one cannot live like that forever. It was too late now. They had a responsibility to help the Hoolian owls. They could no longer indulge in this so-called “splendid isolation.” Although for years, Tengshu, who was also known as the Sage of the River’s End, had led a hermetic life, he was more cognizant and versed in the wider flow of life than one might imagine. He was wise, but he was also politic. With subtlety, he could steer owls not toward his own purposes, but better purposes. He intended to do that now with Gup Theosang, the H’ryth. But unlike the Striga, he did not manipulate through falseness or flattery but directed through clarity and honesty.

  “Gup Theosang, you are right. The Ember of Hoole has no place in here. It will put us at great risk. It will put in greater jeopardy any hope for isolation of our Middle Kingdom, an isolation that we have valued for centuries.”

  “I am glad you see my reason.” The H’ryth nodded.

  “I do. I do indeed. But I also see that the seal of our kingdom has been broken. For almost one thousand years, the Hoolian world did not know that we existed. Although by the grace of our first H’ryth, Theo, we knew of them.”

  “He knew that if they knew of us, ultimately there would be fighting. He taught us the Way of Gentleness because he so hated the weapons that he had made as a…what do they call them? I cannot even remember the dreadful term.”

  “Blacksmith.”

  “Yes, blacksmith. And already we have seen a battle using these vile weapons in our own air, our own sky.”

  But what the H’ryth does not understand, Tengshu thought, is that there is no such thing as “our own sky,” or “our own air.” The sky is the very thing, the entity, the reality that connects us all, no matter if we are Hoolian or Jouzhen owls.

  Tengshu continued. “And there could be more fighting, Gup Theosang. The tyrannical owls, who called themselves the Pure Ones, chased the Guardians here. But we know from Theo and the Theo Papers that the Guardians are good owls, noble owls. Now you must realize that Orlando and the Dragon Court owls who have fled to the Hoolian kingdoms will join forces with these so-called Pure Ones. You see, it is the Pure Ones who want the ember, and so does Orlando. If that ember falls into the wrong talons, it will be catastrophic for all owls no matter where they live—here or in the Hoolian world.”

  “You cannot be sure the dragon owls who just fled will join Orlando and these Pure Ones. Or, for that matter, if Orlando will join the Pure Ones.” There was a note of desperation in the H’ryth’s voice.

  “Gup Theosang, Orlando already has joined the Pure Ones.”

  “What?” The H’ryth staggered on his perch. “You know this with certainty?”

  “Yes, with absolute certainty. Reports from trusted sources—sources too…simple to lie—put Orlando and the owl called Nyra, leader of the Pure Ones, together.” He waited a moment. The green light that flowed from the H’ryth’s eyes seemed to congeal. “Not only that. There are rumors about eggs—strange eggs.” He remembered Dumpy’s reconstruction of the conversation he had overheard between the Striga and Nyra.

  The H’ryth gasped in alarm. “This is bad. Terrible! You remember the middle chapters of the papers of Theo?”

  Tengshu nodded solemnly. “I do indeed! In the Theo Papers there was a section pertaining to the reproductive habits of the Dragon Court owls. It was theorized that if these owls’ feathers were allowed to grow to extravagant lengths they would no longer be able of produce offspring. It would effectively terminate egg laying. And the eggs these Dragon Court owls had laid prior to the therapies to stimulate feather growth had been extremely strange in color. Not white and spherical like all owl eggs, but gray that would darken to black. And they were often oddly shaped.”

  “Tengshu, this can’t be!”

  “I’m afraid it is true, and then where are we?”

  “Then we stand in grave danger of violating our Theotic Oath.” The Theotic Oath was the vow to Theo in which the owls of the Mountain of Time swore to maintain the Dragon Court forever in the ways prescribed by the revered Theosang, the first H’ryth. “What do you propose, Tengshu?”

  “I propose we do exactly as you have suggested. We should not agree to provide a refuge for the Ember of Hoole.” This much had become very clear to Tengshu. It was the Hoolian ember. It had no business being out of the five kingdoms at the other end of the River of Wind. But at the same time, the Hoolian world needed their help. Help to vanquish once and for all these maniacal owls, now reinforced with recruits from their own Middle Kingdom. He took a step closer to Gup Theosang. “But sir, we should not deceive ourselves. We can avoid the ember, but we cannot avoid the battle, nay, the war that will inevitably come. The survival of the civilized kingdoms of good owls depends upon the outcome of this conflict. The fury and the might of these evil owls and their forces could easily be turned on us, our own Jouzhen empire invaded. If we fail, the world of owls will sink into an abyss of darkness and the most sinister epoch imaginable will commence. I am asking for an entire Danyar division. We must fly across the River of Wind to the Hoolian Kingdoms. And fight!”

  This was going to be a massive war. It would require immense power. This would be the War of the Ember.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  To the Northern Kingdoms

  Though Otulissa had never been a member of the tracking or search-and-rescue chaws, she had a sixth sense about certain things beyond her expertise. This sense began to stir in her gizzard. Shortly before she and Cleve had left Dumpy off in the Ice Narrows, Otulissa had warned Dumpy to say nothing but to keep his eyes wide open, and if he saw anything alarming, he was to fly immediately to Nut Beam, one of the Jossian messengers who had been installed at Coryn’s command on the Ice Dagger. Nut Beam would then get word to the Guardians.

  Otulissa and Cleve had been holding fast to a north by northeast course. The wind was hard on them, but soon they would be inside the protection of the Ice Talons. There was a momentary lull in the wind and then the rain came down harder, denting the surface of the water below. Otulissa’s sixth sense twisted her gizzard painfully and she took a sudden dive.

  “What are you doing?” Cleve called out as he watched her veer off the shoulder of the headwind.

  “Course change!” she shouted back urgently. Now she was carving a turn that put them on a due east heading. Otulissa was hovering over a swirl of water. Laced in its foamy frills were feathers—blue feathers. Some pale, some the blue of midnight, some the tint of sapphires. None, however, were the turquoise of the Striga’s feathers. “This looks like a reverse eddy,” she said. “They sometimes occur spontaneously near land formations like this.” She indicated with her head the long reach of coastline to one side and the easternmost claw of the Ice Talons. “They begin at the head of the narrow inlet far inland and eventually spin their way to sea, catching bits of airborne flotsam as they go.”

  “Such as blue feathers,” Cleve replied. Then like the blare of an alarm, “Otulissa!” Cleve hovered just inches over the swirling feathers.

  “What is it, Cleve?”

  “There aren’t just blue feathers here. Some are painted bright pink. And look—blood! There’s been a fight near here.” Cleve tried to quell the rising panic he felt. If there were wounded owls, he needed to help them. This was his duty. Cleve was a healer. He turned to Otulissa. “We need to think this through. It’s a short distance to the shore. We can get out of the wind under the rocks there.”

  A few minutes later, the two owls huddled on a small scrap of beach under a rocky overhang. They had plucked the mass of feathers from the water so they could examine them more closely. There were several kraal feathers stained with blood. “Broken shafts!” Cleve said. “This was a re
al battle.”

  “And then there are the emerald and cobalt-blue ones,” Otulissa said.

  “Yes, but those aren’t broken. I’d wager the blue owls won.” Then he inhaled sharply. “That’s not a kraal feather or one from a blue owl.” He picked up a creamy white feather, a primary from a Snowy Owl, by the look of it, the bottom portion of which was soaked in blood. A few red berries still clung to it. “That’s a gadfeather’s,” he said.

  “A gadfeather’s!” Otulissa said, shocked. “Gadfeathers just sing. They are peace-loving. Kraals fighting is one thing, but gadfeathers? Are you sure it’s a gadfeather’s? I mean, there are lots of Snowy Owls up here and not all are gadfeathers.”

  “There are bright berries, here, in the blood. And I know of only one gadfeather in the Northern Kingdom whose plumage is this creamy color. Isa!” Cleve whispered.

  Otulissa wilfed. She had heard Cleve speak of Isa. Her singing voice was renowned. At one point, Otulissa had wondered if Cleve had not once been the tiniest bit in love with Isa.

  “We are not far from kraal territory here,” Otulissa said. “Straight inland there is a place called the Gray Rocks. Poor ice there, but the kraals like it. There are no firths, no fingers of water penetrating the territory. It is deep inland. Bushes grow there from which they harvest special berries for their dyes.” She paused. “It was also,” she spoke slowly, “a favorite place for hagsfiends. At least in the time of the legends. But why would it be favored now?” she asked in a professorial manner. Otulissa had begun pacing up and down under the overhang, her wings tucked neatly behind her so that the edges of the primaries interlocked in a seam down the middle of her back. “Yes, we must ask ourselves why they would go there. True, it is far from salt water, which hagsfiends feared. But why are the blue owls so fearful? It is very hard to make a traditional schneddenfyrr in that region, for there is little ice. They must seek this place for its remoteness and…and…” Otulissa’s single eye began to sparkle. “Of course, how easy it would be for an owl of such plumage”—she held up the cobalt blue feather—“to blend in with those gaudy kraals! That’s it, Cleve! Gray Rocks could have been the battleground.”