The War of the Ember (4 page)

S
veep trundled along the overland route. She had never been out of the Northern Kingdoms before. And perhaps it was insane not to be swimming. But the katabats had begun to blow earlier, as Svarr had predicted, and the pack ice was being driven down faster than she had anticipated. She was not sure that the puffin would get up his nerve to go to the owls. She had told him to go, but would he? She felt she had to do something despite the weariness, the lethargy that afflicted all polar bears with the coming of winter. A backup plan was needed. The backup plan was the she-wolf, Gyllbane, her old friend. She would go to her and tell her what the puffin had seen.

There was one thing of which she was certain. She was not carrying babies this season. It was nice to have a rest. Beneath the call of winter’s long sleep, she felt a new energy. And who would want to bring young cubs
into such a world, anyway, if what she could piece together from the puffin’s jumbled narrative was true?

She had made Gyllbane’s acquaintance perhaps three summers ago. The wolf was racked with grief over the loss of her son and, as she said, needed to get away. Sveep had just given birth to her second set of cubs, and Gyllbane proved herself remarkably helpful with them. Auntie Gyll, the cubs had begun to call her almost as soon as they could speak. Sveep knew that Gyllbane had been very close to Coryn, the monarch of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. She had shared so much with Gyllbane, and Gyllbane with her. And she knew she must share this, too.

Sveep had been traveling two days and was now approaching Broken Talon Point. The landscape had begun to change contrasting sharply with the treeless world from which Sveep had come. There was not a trace of snow, and what had been a sprinkling of trees soon thickened into groves of tall firs and spruce. Sveep had little use for trees but she could appreciate the quiet grandeur with which they rose from this otherwise barren landscape. She knew that farther into the Beyond, the trees became fewer again. As Gyllbane had explained, it was a harsh, stark landscape.

It was not far from here that she knew Gyllbane made her summer camp. She would be closing in on it soon. She had to remember not to call the wolf by her old name. She was no longer Gyllbane, but Namara. Since Sveep had last seen her, the wolf had become the chieftain of the MacNamaras—a clan distinguished by both extreme intelligence and toughness.

In the country known as the Beyond, each wolf clan had its own territory but the MacNamara territory was at some remove from the rest. They joined the other clans on the seasonal byrrgis, the formations for hunting, and came for the various all-clan gatherings at the Sacred Ring. But the MacNamara clan preferred to keep its distance from the others.

Suddenly, from behind a fir tree, a small wolf pup scampered out. The pup could not have been more than six moons old. It looked plump, and Sveep realized for the first time that she was hungry. Of course, it wouldn’t do to eat a wolf pup. But she wondered now what she would do for food. She was far from the sea. The salt tang had faded and with it her customary food choices—fish, the occasional seal, otter. All the delicious choices of the Northern Kingdoms. What in the name of Ursa did one eat around here? Trees? She plodded on, hoping the pup would keep its distance. She
didn’t want to deal with the temptation. It was a curious little critter, all fluff, and yapping now.

“Are you real? I mean really real?” the pup asked Sveep.

Sveep kept going and tried not to look at the pup. “Of course I’m real. Aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes. You bet. Almost six moons old. Another moon and I get to go on my first byrrgis. You’re a polar bear, aren’t you?”

“Indeed.” Sveep said as little as possible.

“You’re bigger than a grizzly. We’d have a hard time taking you down to eat. I think we’d need two clans to do it. So don’t worry.”

Me, worry?
Sveep thought.

“Crannog!” A beautiful silver she-wolf exploded from some brush. It ran straight toward Sveep then immediately lowered her body. Pressing her belly to the ground, she flattened her ears and flashed the whites of her eyes. “Show some manners, Crannog,” she growled to her pup. The little pup immediately crouched down.

Sveep stopped short. She had heard that the dire wolves of the Beyond had strange ways, but this beat all. They were scraping on their bellies toward Sveep. What in the name of Ursa was going on? “We have heard of your kind from Namara,” the she-wolf said.

“Yes, yes, I am an old friend of Gyll…Namara. I have important news for her. I must see her right away. Point me in the right direction.”

The she-wolf stopped groveling. “Point you in right direction!” she almost shrieked. “You think ye can just barge into her den?” The wolf had an odd accent, a sing-songy voice that Sveep now remembered was similar to that of Gyllbane.

“Well…well, let her know I’m here. But I’ve got to see her immediately.”

The wolf now drew herself up to her full height. The sun was setting, washing the land with a soft pink-orange light. Her silvery fur seemed to shimmer. “My name is Blair. How do ye call yourself?”

“Sveep.”

“Ah!” she replied. She nodded her head slightly.

“You know me?”

“I know of ye. I know that you are the bear that Namara, when she was still Gyllbane, shared a cave with somewhere far north of here. It was the time when she be sick with grief for her son, Cody. I know you were a great comfort to her and that she done poured out her grief until she was left so weak she could not eat and that you fed her some of the milk from your own teats. Milk that was for your cubs.”

“Oh, my cubs were fat. I had milk to spare.”

“She might have died had you not.” She sighed. “But she did not tell you of our peculiar ways, I suppose. You saw what I did—” She paused. “—And what my son did not do—when I first came up to you?”

“Yes.”

“I made the gestures a wolf would make to one of higher rank.” She then turned to her pup, who was still groveling on the ground. “And until this young’un learns, he shall not go on any byrrgis.” A little whine came from the pile of fur. The pup had hidden his eyes behind his paws in shame. Only the pink of his nose could be seen. Blair continued in her lilting voice. “We have our codes of conduct. The Gaddernock we call it; the way of the dire wolf clans. Now follow me and I will take you to the Gadderheal, our ceremonial cave.”

“But I just want to see Gyll…I mean, Namara, in her own den. This need not be so…so formal.”

“Oh, it’s not a matter of formality.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s the only place you’ll fit.”

Y
ou say the puffin said something about hagsfiends.” Namara’s eyes glistened like resplendent twin emeralds in the dark gloom of the cave. Outside, tree limbs creaked in a sudden wind. Sveep nodded. “And then you say the other owl, the blue one, said something about the Ember of Hoole?”

“Not exactly in that order,” Sveep replied. “First, the blue owl said that he knew all about the ember. And then the other owl said something about hagsfiends.”

Namara’s eyes became green slits. Her hackles rose stiffly, and her ears stood up straight. She began padding about the cave in a tight circle. “This is bad…very bad.”

“I know nothing about the ember or hagsfiends,” Sveep said. “This is all owl business, isn’t it?”

“Yes…” Then Namara stopped and peered at her old friend, who had been so helpful to her in the time of her overwhelming grief. “But it is our business, as well.
All of us.” She paused again. “Cody.” Her voice broke as she spoke her son’s name, remembering that last image of him dead atop the
Book of Kreeth,
his throat slashed. “Cody died trying to save the world from hagsfiends.”

“But I thought they were just creatures of legends, very old legends, and as the owl said, have been gone for a thousand years.” There was a desperate note in Sveep’s voice as if she were grasping for some small thread of hope.

“I thought that, too, but Coryn told me that the legends, are not mere legends. This book, the one they called the
Book of Kreeth,
was an ancient tome that had belonged to an arch hagsfiend. It was thought to have formulas and designs for all sorts of haggish inventions and creations. That is why the Guardians fought so hard in the Beyond, to keep it from Nyra and the Pure Ones, and why we helped them.”

Sveep knew that Gyllbane and Coryn were about as close as a wolf and an owl could be. It was Gyllbane who had been there when Coryn had retrieved the Ember of Hoole. “And tell me, Sveep,” the wolf continued, “the other owl—what did the puffin say it looked like?”

“Terrible. The puffin said he wasn’t sure if it was a Great Horned, a Barn Owl, or what. He thought maybe a Barn Owl, but its feathers were dark and raggedy at
the ends. Almost black like a crow’s and when it turned its face, it was terribly scarred.”

Namara lowered her head and shook it back and forth mournfully. “How has this happened? Cody can’t have died in vain. It can’t be true.” But she knew it was. Somehow an evil had started to seep back into their peaceful universe.
What was the word owls used? Nachtmagen? Yes, nachtmagen was…
The wolf could not finish the thought. She trotted out of the Gadderheal. A full moon blazed in the sky. She stood in a silver column of its light and, throwing her head back, began to howl the strange mad music of wolves. These were not the cries of mourning. Of this much even Sveep could tell. Savage and untamed, this was a howl of rage.

Namara’s wolves stirred in their dens, and the wind carried her howls to those more distant clans. No other creatures knew the meaning of the wolves’ howling. They only knew that once it started, it did not end for hours. The grizzly bear, the moose, the caribou, the jack-rabbits, the birds that flew overhead, felt the song drill into every part of their beings. But what did it mean, this wild song? For that is what the other creatures of the Beyond called it. They would whisper to one another in their dens or burrows, “They are wild singing again.” “It’s the moon,” one would say. Then another would argue,
“No, it’s not the moon. It can be moonless and still they sing.” “They’re crazy!” another might say.

But the wolves were anything but crazy. They were among the most organized and methodical of animals in everything they did, from how they hunted to their strategies for traveling to the rearing of their young. Their howling was as systematic as any language, and through it they could convey an enormous range of information. Now on this night hundreds of wolves began to leave their dens and form byrrgises. So the call had gone out to break summer camp and meet in the Gadderheal of the Sacred Ring of volcanoes. The owl kingdoms were imperiled and so was the world of every living creature.

In a rocky redoubt near the volcanoes of the Sacred Ring there was a masked owl, a Rogue smith by the name of Gwyndor. He looked up from his forge, where he had just put to use the excellent bonk coals he had acquired from one of the colliers. Namara’s first howls were too far from the volcanoes for any creature near them to hear at first but as the byrrgises made their way toward the Sacred Ring, the howling continued and the approach of the wolves was known.

Gwyndor had spent more years than any other owl
in the Beyond. And he had become a student of wolves. Although he did not know even the very general meaning of the howls, he could recognize the voices of many of the clan chiefs. The wolf who led the howling varied, depending on the situation, and that wolf was called the skreeleen. This time the skreeleen was Namara. He was sure of it. And if it was Namara, Gwyndor knew it was not an ordinary situation. Not a herd of caribou migrating through the MacNamara territory, or a wolf sick with the foaming-mouth disease, or a grizzly fishing in the river. She would let another high-ranking wolf of her clan convey that type of information. But when Namara howled, which was rare, it was about owls. And although Gwyndor did not know the meaning, he detected a vibration in the timbre of her cries that hearkened back to that dreadful night when owl and wolf fought flank to wing and her only pup had been killed. He felt a dread build in his gizzard. The byrrgises of the clans that were converging on the Sacred Ring were still several hours away. It would be daybreak when they arrived. Should he wait or fly out to meet Namara, get her awful news, and then fly on to the great tree to deliver it? He had been a slipgizzle for the great tree for some time now. The Sacred Ring was a good place to pick up information, because so many
Rogue colliers came to dive the coal beds from all parts of the Southern Kingdoms. But if he waited, he would be forced to fly in daylight, and crow mobbings had been on the rise lately. And how much would he learn if he waited? One really couldn’t interrupt a byrrgis, nor would he be permitted into a Gadderheal. But Coryn would. Coryn had a special relationship with the wolves. With Namara in particular.

He decided that he must leave immediately for the great tree. The wind had shifted. He should be able to make it at least as far as the border between the Shadow Forest and Silverveil. Of course, if he flew over the spirit woods it would be even shorter and safer. Crows never entered the spirit woods, but he felt himself wilf at the thought. Gwyndor had never encountered a scroom and although it was said they were perfectly harmless he was not anxious to meet up with any, either.

Another owl far from the Beyond was perched on the very top of the bell tower trying to decide not
when
she should leave for the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, but
if
she
could
leave. Bess had not left the Palace of Mists since she had first arrived years before. The farthest she had ever flown since that time was to the base of the waterfalls to hunt. The mist-shrouded cleft in the Shadow
Forest provided everything she needed. And the Boreal Owl, as she had grown older, hoarded her solitude like a miser hoarding gold. It was priceless. She had sworn years before after the arduous journey in which she had transported her father’s bones that she would never leave this palace. It was her paradise, her own glaumora on earth. She found all the company she required in books and ideas. Over the years, her long-distance flight skills had become as rusty as the hinges on the palace doors. She knew all one could about navigation, for she had read all the books of the old explorers, but could she do it on the wing? Now, as she perched on the edge of the bell tower, she wondered if she had the courage to leave this place. Her gizzard rebelled at the very thought. Who would toll for her father?

She was happy that her father had not come to her as a scroom, for that would mean he had unfinished business on earth. Instead her father had appeared in a dream and said, “Wake!” Maybe that meant she should leave her concerns of scholarship and theory and go out into the world. The facts were pretty straightforward. An owl lay dead in the palace. She had killed that owl. He lay in a pool of blood, an arrowhead buried in his breast. And now she must go out into the world. She must fly to the great tree and tell the shocking news of the intruder
who spoke of hags and hagsmire and demanded the ember. And if one owl knew the ember was at the Palace of Mists, did others?

Bess shut her eyes.
I can’t go! I can’t! I am so scared.
She felt her gizzard clench. A warm draft of air rose up from below. Such warm drafts or thermals were rare. Was it a sign? These thermals were the easiest to fly, giving owls a sturdy boost, allowing them to soar with hardly a wing waggle for propulsion. It seemed as if the very elements were conspiring against her fear.
Or are they conspiring
for
me? Trying to entice me into the sky?

She felt pressed now between this rising thermal and that pool of blood in the crypt. She closed her eyes, gave a sudden small yelp, and flung herself onto the warm breast of the updraft.
Here goes nothing!
she thought. And felt the warm air fold around her like the wings of her da.