Book 12 - The Golden Tree (10 page)

manner, and implored. "You've got to understand.
No one wil suspect me if I go."
"But how wil you find them? No one knows where they might be."
"I'l go to these grog trees I've heard about. A lot of gossip swirls about in grog trees. If my voice is back, I might sing. Singers in olden days were always welcome at grog trees, Otulissa told me." She shut her eyes for a long time. A very long time, and did not open them when she began to speak. "And it wil come back, Bubo, it wil . As soon as I get away." She opened her eyes now and looked straight into the Great Horned's eyes. "There is something wrong with the tree, Bubo. You know it as wel as I do. It ain't right. Everything looks al gold and glorious but
116 128 something's amiss. It shames me now to think of meself singing away at al those stupid ceremonies for the frinkin' ember." "Hush, Plonkie. Mind your beak. They got slipgizzles al over. Can hardly breathe without them listening in."

"Oh, Bubo, but al that nonsense - acolytes of the
ashes, the ember procession, the sacred this, the blah-blah that - and I was actual y enjoying it for a while. I got to wear that scrap of purple velvet tufted with ermine, and I felt so special." "You are special, Plonkie."
"It's my voice that was special and now it's cracked."
There was a fluttering outside the hol ow and the shadow of wings passed through the stream of moonlight. Bubo looked around nervously and then leaned in close to the Snowy so that his beak was almost touching her ear slit. "Plonkie, are you real y set on doing this?"
"I am, Bubo."
117 chapter seventeen
The Shape Of the Flames
Awing and a whisper, thought Soren. Is that al

we've got? Yes. That seemed to be what he, the
Band, and Coryn were flying on. It was al too vague. He wanted to be able to trust the strange rabbit's mystic web readings, but it just al seemed so ... so ... he searched for the word ... so wispy. So insubstantial. And if Nyra was real y there in this cave with whatever remnants of the Pure Ones there might be, things needed to be firmer. They had to plan a strategy. What were they to do? just fly in and seize the book? Even if they were successful in taking the book, would that be the end of their troubles? It wasn't real y the book that was the problem. It was, Soren supposed, the ideas in the book. But ideas could be dangerous just the way the ember could be dangerous in the talons of the wrong owl. He supposed they must fly on. Within a split second of having that thought, he knew he was dead wrong. And as if to confirm his next thought he saw the dark tendrils of smoke rising in the distance.
118 130 Soren lifted a port wing, giving the signal to land. They had flown fast from Silverveil and were now on the border between The Barrens and Ambala.

Ambala.
"What are we stopping for? I'm not tired,' Coryn asked as they settled into one of the rather puny trees in The Barrens. But Gylfie took one look at Soren and realized immediately that something was disturbing him deeply. The spindly branch could barely support the weight of the five owls and bowed toward the ground,
"Brushfire over there half a league away." Digger nodded toward the rol ing smudge of smoke on the horizon.
"I know," Soren said. "That's part of the reason we've stopped."
"What's the other part?" Gylfie asked. She fixed her old friend with a knowing look. "We're rushing into this."
"What do you mean?' Coryn asked. His voice was slightly strained. "That was one of the clearest readings I've ever gotten from the rabbit." "You've encountered that rabbit al of two times, Coryn," Soren said. "We need more information. I want to dive into that brushfire. Get some coals and

build a smal fire here."
Coryn looked somberly at his uncle. "You know I can't just simply ask a fire. That's not how it works." 119 131 "I know, Coryn, I know. I don't want you to ask anything. I only want you to
watch - just watch. There are hot coals in these brushfires. They'l give you good flames." Gylfie sighed. "Except for you. and Coryn, the rest of us won't be much help in harvesting coals. We're hardly col iers. Too bad Otulissa isn't here." Soren jerked his head up. He felt a sharp ping in his gizzard and blinked at Gylfie. The moment she said the words "too bad Otulissa isn't here" it reminded him of something.
"What's wrong. Soren?" Gylfie asked. He shook his head as if to dislodge a thought that had become wedged deep in his brain. "When you said 'Otulissa' it reminded me of something." Another wisp? A wisp of a dream perhaps?

An hour later, the five owls backed away from a
smal fire that they had built with the half dozen or so coals that Soren and Coryn had retrieved. Coryn stood the closest to the fire. He felt clumsy, even stupid. The flames looked so ordinary. This wasn't right. He spun his head around final y. "I don't mean to be rude, but the rest of you get out of here. Scram. I can't do it when you're watching me." "Of course," Soren said. "We'l go hunting." Once they were gone, Coryn relaxed. He let the heat
120 132 of the flames lick his face, He closed his eyes and watched the red shadows dance jigs on the inside of his eyelids, then opened them again. The moon was rising. More than halfway through its newing, it appeared slightly lopsided, as if it were about to tumble off the horizon. When it was ful in a few more days, there would be an eclipse according to Gylfie, who knew the ways of the stars and the planets because she was the navigation ryb. Coryn had been hatched on the night of an eclipse. And so had Hoole, the king of the legends,

and so had Nyra. He felt a shiver pass through him.
How could the world contain such good and such bad?
And what was he? What if the blood of a
hagsfiend real y did run through his veins? His mind wandered. The flames cast red silhouettes against the moon that trembled now on the darkening horizon. Odd, but he suddenly realized that he had never seen the flames in just this manner - their silhouettes as opposed to looking directly at them. He could not look into them as deeply, but their contours, their shapes had a new clarity. He saw the shape of an owl. A Whiskered Screech, he was certain. He could tel by the smal tuft of feathers that hung from his face. He was not especial y strong nor a steady flier, and what was that - a nest-maid snake coiled on his back? A wind stirred the fire and the flames leaped
121 133 suddenly to one side, stretching, nearly gal oping across the silver of the moon. His gizzard gave a smal jump. Something so familiar in that shape, but just then low clouds brushed across the moon. "Racdrops!" Coryn muttered, and dropped his gaze to the flames in the fire. Could he find it

there? It was the second shape, the second
silhouette that intrigued him, and not that of the Whiskered Screech. There was something in that shape, and he was sure that it was not an owl this time that tugged at his very' gizzard. He felt a longing, a deep and anguished longing - for a place? For a creature? He peered deeply into the flames. There are so many different colors in a fire no one would believe it, thought Coryn. There is never just red or orange. Coryn had heard that there were no two snow-flakes exactly alike, and he believed that no two flames were alike, either. He had once tried to count the shades of orange, but at some imperceptible point the orange seemed to melt into yel ow, and then within the yel ow... Coryn's gizzard flinched. A lovely shade of cream! Soren was right - they were rushing into things. They should not be flying toward the canyonlands at al . They needed an immediate course correction. Coryn had only seen that peculiar cream color once before, and not in a fire but in the Beyond. It was on the glossy coat of a dire wolf. "Gyl bane!" 122
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Most Distressing News
It was a long way to the Beyond, but luckily once again the wind blew from behind and gave them a hefty push north and west. The night was thinning. The moon had slipped away into another world, and it was becoming that hazy time before the dawn. As they shifted positions in their flight formation so that Twilight could fly point in this murky light streaked with false shadows and blurred horizons, Soren could feel the tremor of excitement that coursed through their gizzards. They were at last to meet Gyl bane, the courageous she-wolf, who had turned on her own clan, the notorious MacHeaths. and befriended Coryn. Her own pup had been maimed by Lord MacHeath in hopes that this would qualify the young wolf to become a member of the Sacred Watch.
Once more, Soren felt a strange little ping in his gizzard. Otulissa! Had he dreamed of her? Had he seen something in a dream? Had his starsight revealed something he could not quite grasp? It

seemed odd to him that
123 135 now for the first time he was flying to the Beyond. Otulissa, of course, had been in the Beyond. That was where she had firstfound Corynandtaught him to col ierand then... Wel , thought Sores, as they say, the rest is history. "Fire In the sky! Volcanoes! Dead ahead!" Twilight shouted back.
The Band blinked as they perched atop a ridge. It was a strange and wonderful place. the Beyond. A trio of wolves approached them.. The noble Gyl bane and her son, Cody, and. the faithful Hamish, Coryn's best friend from his time in the Beyond. Hamish, born with a crippling deformity, had qualified for the Sacred Watch in which he had briefly served. But one of the true blessings of the ember was that once it was recovered, the wolves of the Watch were restored. What was broken in their bodies was mended. What was deformed was made to grow straight. What was crippled gained strength. When Coryn saw his dear friend Hamish come bounding up the rocky escarpment, sleek and powerful, he experienced an unspeakable thril . And

though he was far from the ember he felt a
shimmering within him, a glow at the very core of his gizzard that he knew could only be that of the ember. It was strange, but for the first time he began to get a glimmering that one did not need to have the ember to possess it. Fie realized this as Hamish stepped closer
124 136 and he touched his beak to Harnish's wet nose in greeting. Coryn saw the deep burnish of green in his wolf eyes, the same flickering green found in what they had come to think of as the gizzard of the Ember of Hoole. That glimpse of green in the wolf's eyes seemed to kindle a sympathetic response, a shimmering heat within Coryn.
Soren, although he had read about the wolf clans in the legends and heard from Coryn about their peculiar and elaborate codes of conduct, was nonetheless astonished. Despite Coryn's protests, the three wolves scraped the rough ground as they kneeled, then crouched and sunk to their bel ies, twisting their necks in al sorts of odd contortions, then flattened their ears and flashing the whites of their eyes. This was the conduct required of a

their eyes. This was the conduct required of a
creature of low rank when approaching one of high rank. Coryn was a king and not for one minute would these wolves let him forget it.
After the introductions were made and the greetings exchanged, Gyl bane, one of the most beautiful wolves imaginable, turned to Coryn and said, "So, friend, what brings you here, so far from your island in the middle of the sea?" Coryn turned his head toward the circle of the five volcanoes that made what was cal ed the Sacred Ring. It
125 137 al looked so different now. Col iers stil plunged in steep dives to harvest the coal slopes that spil ed from the volcanoes' craters, and there was the usual traffic on the fringes of the circle between the col iers and Rogue smiths as they haggled over the price of coals and whether one was truly bonk or not. But the immense piles of gnaw bones surrounding the five volcanoes seemed bare without the wolves of the watch keeping their vigil from the tops.
Final y, Coryn answered. "I began this journey for

the most selfish of reasons. I feared that I bore the
traces of a vile heritage. I could not put my obsession with my mother, Nyra, to rest." Gyl bane blinked. In her own way, she understood this. She had met Nyra and knew her power, and she herself had once been a victim of ruthlessness. It had been hard for her to forget Mac Heath and his abuse of her and her pup.
"And now?" Hamish asked. "Why have you come, old friend? Have you found out what you want to know?"
"Not real y, but I have found out that she stil lives and that in her possession is a book that is very dangerous. You've heard of hagsfiends?" The three wolves exchanged glances. Although it was fairly clear that the word was unfamiliar to them, they seemed disturbed. The hackles
126 138 on the backs of their necks suddenly were erect, their eyes narrowed to green slits. "Let us not talk out here. Fol ow me to my cave." The cave shook with the thunderous eruptions of

the volcanoes, and outside the night flinched with
the red light of flames that scoured the sky. "And you say," Hamish spoke slowly, "that these creatures are no more?"
"Yes, they are extinct, yet not entirely gone," Gylfie said.
"I don't understand," Gyl bane said. "Either something is or it isn't, correct?" Soren now spoke. "These hagsfiends that your ancestors - and ours - fought alongside Hoole, these creatures in their ancient forms are dead and gone. But
they have left behind dim shadows____" How to explain it?
Soren thought. "Like whispers from another world they come to us, fragments from a bad dream. But it is not a dream. We have al had brushes with them. Haven't any of you dire wolves ever been haunted by such?"
Gyl bane shook her head. "Never. My old chief,

MacHeath, was trouble enough. I surely didn't need
a hagsfiend or even a dim shadow of one to cause more." Coryn felt a slight tremor reverberate in his gizzard when she spoke of the wrathful old wolf who had maimed her
127 139 son, Cody, when he was just a pup. "What are these dim shadows of hagsfiends like?" Soren continued. "Somewhat like scrooms, yet far less powerful." There was an undeniable nervous reaction among the three wolves in the cave when they heard this.
"We have not read the legends as you have and we need to know more about the ancient forms of the hags-fiends. Describe them to us." Then Gyl bane asked with a sudden urgency, "What do they look like, wherein lie their powers, and what exactly could they do to ordinary creatures?' "You have to begin," Gylfie said, "with magen, for it was a time of magen in those ancient days - both good magen and evil magen." So Gylfie, the rest of the Band, and Coryn described as best they could what they had learned from reading the legends.