The War of the Ember (5 page)

T
he days had shortened and the nights had grown longer. In the few daylight hours left, the owls slept deeply, recovering from all the work and play of the season of long nights. Since her injury of the previous year, Otulissa found that she had to rebuild her strength gradually and often retired earlier than the other owls, taking a few hours of quiet reflection before sleep. There had been a string of sparkling days in the season of the Copper-Rose Rain, and since she had not exhausted herself flying all night long she often retreated to her favorite spot in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree—the hanging garden. It was her chosen place for reflection. The pockets of the tree, where the major limbs joined the trunk, had always collected a variety of organic matter. It had been customary to clear this out several times a year as it was thought to be better for the health of the tree. Otulissa had supervised this chore. But in Otulissa’s capacity of Ga’Hoolology ryb, she had
begun a series of experiments in which she let the organic matter accumulate. She discovered that with careful management of the small shrubs, lichens, and plants that took root in the pockets, the overall health of the tree was enhanced. Indeed, many of the plants in the hanging gardens offered additional crops that could be gathered for food. A new variety of nooties, similar to the ones that could be harvested during the time of the Copper-Rose Rain, now grew during other seasons. Aside from the nutritional benefits of the cultivated pockets, there was the sheer beauty of their hanging gardens; the mosses, lichens, and many flowering plants—including orchids—were suspended like colorful constellations from the canopy of the tree.

On this morning, with the sun bouncing off the rosy golden milkberries, the tree seemed spangled with light. Cleve joined her, as did Tengshu, her old friend from the sixth kingdom, who was staying for a spell in the tree. So successful had the Greenowls—trained by Tengshu—been in routing the Striga and his troops from the great tree, that Coryn had decided upon the formation of a new chaw so that Guardians could learn Danyar, the fighting discipline practiced by the blue owls of the Middle Kingdom. Tengshu was here to teach to them.

“I do feel, Cleve dear, that perhaps we owls, being night creatures, have underrated the splendor of the day.”

“Perhaps. But it is hard to imagine flying about in the daylight with a scalding sun blasting your wings. Daylight has no texture. It’s not like the night. There are no stars, none of the black feathery softness of the evening.”

“Oh, Cleve, just listen to your prejudice. You define everything in owl terms—saying the black is feathery.”

“I agree,” Tengshu said. “You know, in the Middle Kingdom, we do quite a bit of day flying, since we have no crows, and need not fear mobbing. I was flying about just now. There is a new freshness in the air.” He hesitated. “I don’t know how to describe it. Should I say ‘thump of wind’ coming in from the north?”

“Ah, the katabats!” Cleve said.

“The katabats?” Tengshu asked.

“Yes, that’s what we call them in the Northern Kingdoms where they originate. You’re just feeling the very outermost fringes of them,” Otulissa said, then continued. “They are actually caused by a reverse cyclonic inversion…”

“Your knowledge, madam, astounds me,” Tengshu exclaimed quickly. Then he paused a moment. “I think
I’ve seen that Short-eared Owl with the russet feathers, sensational flier, taking a daytime flight.”

“Ruby, of course,” Otulissa and Cleve both said at once.

“Yes, Ruby.”

“Ruby flies night or day.” Otulissa laughed. “If there’s a good wind to be caught she is out there.” And then rather slyly, Otulissa swiveled her head in Cleve’s direction. “Do ask Ruby, my dear, about the texture of the day as compared to the night.”

“Ha!” Cleve churred heartily.

Just at that moment they heard something flapping loudly above them. They all flipped their heads straight up to see what it was.

“Great Glaux, what is that thing?” Tengshu exclaimed.

“I’m coming in! I’m coming in! Mind your heads,” the thing called out. “I’m not so good at this!”

A flash of orange sliced through a cascade of orchids that swung from the upper level of the hanging garden. “Oh, Great Glaux! There goes my
Cymbidium strumella!”
Otulissa shrieked as the lovely yellow-speckled blossoms of the orchid swirled around them.

There was a soft plop as Dumpy belly flopped on a hummock of moss. “Am I here? Am I actually here?”
he gasped, looking up into the faces peering down at him.

“That depends. What was your intended destination?” Otulissa asked.

“Destination?” Dumpy repeated.

“Oh, Glaux,” Otulissa murmured. She’d forgotten how dumb puffins were. Why was this one here? They rarely left the Ice Narrows. “Where did you want to go?” She spoke slowly and distinctly as one might to a very young child.

“Uh…the great tree. The great tree. Big news. Big, big news!”

“Well, then you have arrived at your destination,” Cleve said.

“And what is the big news?” Otulissa asked.

Dumpy staggered to his feet. “Uh…I was afraid you were going to ask me that.”

“Why were you afraid?” Tengshu tipped his head forward.

Dumpy stared so hard at Tengshu his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Oh, Great Ice! Another one!”

“Another what?” the three owls asked at once.

“He looks just like the other blue owl I saw.” Dumpy nodded at Tengshu. “Except this one’s prettier. More feathers.”

Otulissa gasped. “It can’t be!” she whispered.

Cleve took a step forward and put a protective wing around Dumpy’s plump shoulders. “Now, son.”

“I’m not your son,” Dumpy said with sudden alarm. “I’m not nearly smart enough to be an owl. And I can tell you that if I were your son, I’d be a great disappointment to you.”

“It’s just an expression,” Otulissa interjected.

Dumpy suddenly looked up at Cleve. “Oh, Good Ice, I know…who you are.” Dumpy began to sputter. “You’re the owl who took the sea tick from my foot.” He lifted up one of his webbed feet and began waving it about until he fell over. “Good as new!” he said as he picked himself up and flopped against Cleve’s chest, embracing him.

“Let’s get to the bottom of this,” Otulissa continued.

“Oh, yes, I have a bottom!” Dumpy said, and immediately turned around and tipped his butt into the air.

Otulissa leaned toward Tengshu and whispered, “You must understand that puffins can be very literal. So we must just stick to the basics. Now, Dumpy, you did say your name was Dumpy, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Dumpy said with some uncertainty.

“Concentrate, dear,” Otulissa went on. “You say you saw a blue owl.”

Dumpy shut his eyes very tightly and appeared to be concentrating with every bit of brain he possessed. He began to speak very slowly.

“You see, there is this ice cave and I know a back way in, and I saw these two owls go in there, so I sneaked in the back way and listened…”

“Two owls, not just one?”

“Yes, two. But only one was blue. Blue? I just learned the name for that color. I used to call it ‘sky,’ but from the polar bear I learned it’s blue.”

“Polar bear—how does a polar bear fit into this?” Cleve asked.

“Oh, the polar bear didn’t fit into the ice cave. No, I had to fly to the polar bear and tell her about what they said because I didn’t know half their words, words like ‘hagsfiend.’”

“HAGSFIEND!” the three owls gasped.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the great tree, unbeknownst to Otulissa, Cleve, and Tengshu, another unlikely visitor had arrived and gone directly to Soren.

Y
oicks!” blurted Twilight. “It’s absolutely yoicks.” The Great Gray had taken the words out of all their beaks. Soren swiveled his head, first one way and then the other. He blinked at this motley crew: Dumpy the puffin, Gwyndor, and the most astonishing visitor of all—Bess—Bess who had never in their experience dared leave the Palace of Mists.

Yoicks, indeed,
thought Soren. Bess had arrived on the branch outside his hollow as he and Pelli and their children were about to take tea. Completely exhausted, feathers askew from the tumultuous flight, she was an alarming sight. The three B’s stared at her wide-eyed. Pelli was speechless. Gulping to catch her breath, Bess said, “I came right here. Soren, I must see the king and the rest of the Band.” He had tried to get her to rest, take a spot of milkberry tea. But she had shouted, which in itself was shocking, for Bess always spoke in a low melodious voice, “There is no time for tea!”

So they had gone to Coryn’s hollow, only to find the puffin, Dumpy, already there with Otulissa, Tengshu, and Cleve.

“All right,” said Coryn, “let’s start again at the beginning so Soren and the Band can hear. Take this from the top, as the expression goes.”

Dumpy immediately tried to stand on his head.

“That won’t be necessary, dear,” Gylfie said, and flashed a look at Otulissa as if to say,
How will we ever get through this?

Little by little the story came out. A fragment here, a sliver there. Threads, snippets. No one individual had the whole piece but when these shreds were pieced together there emerged a grim design indeed—on a diabolical cloth.

“Now, let’s review what we know,” Coryn said. “The ember. You are sure, Bess, that is what the Boreal Owl was after? He actually said the word?”

“He said ‘Where is it?’ and I said, ‘Where is what?’ And he said. ‘The Ember of Hoole.’ And I said. ‘I know nothing of any ember.’”

“And then you killed him.”

“Well, it wasn’t quite that quick. We fought. But, yes. I killed him. He’s dead.” All the owls looked at one
another and shook their heads in wonder. Bess, the timid scholar, had killed an owl!

“So we must assume that this Boreal Owl is not the only one who knows about the ember,” Soren spoke softly.

“I didn’t know what to think,” Bess replied. “I was torn about what to do. Whether to fly here with the ember. But if there were other owls who knew I might be carrying it, I could be ambushed. It seemed best to leave it hidden where it is.”

“I think that was the best decision,” Coryn said. “But now, turning toward this other matter.” There was a sharp, quick stab like a pinprick in all of their gizzards. By “other matter” they knew Coryn meant hagsfiends.

“Kreeth’s book is still here,” Otulissa said. “It was the first thing I checked on after we ousted the Striga, or rather the first thing Fritha checked, since I was so badly wounded. There is no way he could have studied that book. It’s been under lock and key since the time we took it…” She hesitated, for the searing image was still sharp in her mind, as it was in the minds of the other owls who had been there: Cody’s bloodied and broken body crumpled atop the book. Indeed, the book still
bore stains of the young wolf’s blood. She turned toward Dumpy.

“Dumpy, now concentrate,” Otulissa said. This was about the fifth time the owls had asked him to concentrate and he was beginning to find it easier. “Can your recall exactly what you heard about hagsfiends?”

Dumpy closed his eyes again and clamped his beak shut for a moment, then spoke. “I think I can. The blue owl said hagsfiends vanished nearly one thousand years ago. Then the dark owl said, ‘So you think they are gone forever?’ The blue owl said, ‘Madame General, what are you suggesting?’ and the dark owl said, ‘I am suggesting nothing is forever.’ And the blue owl said he wasn’t good at riddles. And then the dark owl said something about the Long Night. ‘A marvelous hatching will occur.’ The blue owl asked, ‘There is an egg?’ And the dark owl said, ‘Soon.’”

Dumpy paused and looked at his audience of owls. “Hey, what happened to you guys? You all got so skinny,” Dumpy said.

In the space of Dumpy’s very admirable recitation all the owls had wilfed to half their normal size.

Soren regained his composure first. “Dumpy, that was an excellent job you did just now. I have one question.”

“Yes?”

“Why do you keep calling the one owl the ‘dark owl’?”

“Well, at first I thought the owl was a Barn Owl, the shape of her face, you know, and the length of her wings, and her height. And I thought I saw some of those speckles like you have on your shoulders. But her feathers weren’t that pretty golden color like yours.”

Otulissa blinked. This was a rather detailed description for a puffin to be rendering. In fact, all the owls in the hollow were astonished that a puffin could hold so many logically connected thoughts in its mind. “But,” Dumpy continued, “her feathers were so dark, almost black. And they were long and shaggy. At least the edges were. She almost looked like a crow, but uglier.”

Hagsfiend!
The word hung unspoken and dreadful in the dim light of the hollow like a curse rising from hagsmire. And each owl felt a terrible clench deep in its gizzard.

Gylfie was the first to speak. “And the face. You say it was the shape of a Barn Owl’s”

Dumpy nodded.

“But what else about it? Were her feathers white like Soren’s and her eyes black?”

“Her face was scarred. Especially on one side. I didn’t
see it at first until she took off the mask and hung it on an ice pick. But then it was awful. I’d never seen such an awful face. One scar…” Dumpy hesitated and stole a glance at Coryn. “One scar cut across her face like yours—begging your pardon, your face is much more handsome—and her eyes, well, they weren’t completely black like yours. Something flickered deep inside them—a pale yellow light.”

Coryn’s anguish was palpable. He sighed deeply. “So we now know for certain that Nyra lives. Indeed, she wears a mask like that of my father, Kludd, made presumably from its scraps. And she grows haggish.”

“Where she found a Rogue smith to fix that mask for her, I’ll never know!” Gwyndor seethed.

“Any kind of creature can be bought. Owls ain’t no different,” Bubo said.

This news was shocking. But Coryn seemed to recover and to expand. His plumage puffed until he was enormous. “The Striga and Nyra are in collusion. Now we know. We shall act. We shall not let ourselves be terrorized or intimidated. We have the advantage of knowing that they are up to something.” Coryn’s eyes were blazing. Soren felt his gizzard stir with pride. He had not seen Coryn so strong, so steady, so resolute in a long time. The young king had spent a large part of his
life haunted by the violent history of his parents, Kludd and Nyra. Raised by the most ruthless mother owl imaginable, he was no stranger to tyranny. He now turned to the puffin, Gwyndor, and Bess, who stood side by side, and began to speak. “You three birds have shown extraordinary courage and wit.”

Dumpy blinked.

Wit! He’s saying I have wit!

“Each of you was alert and ready to act. Gwyndor, with your keen ear for the wolves, you were able to discern the voice of my dear friend Gyllbane and realized that even though you were not sure of the exact meaning of the howls, that she was deeply agitated. You knew that she was skreeling as she had when she led the byrrgis for the battle of the
Book of Kreeth.

“And you, dear Bess, defended the ember with a courage the equal of any in battle. You left your cherished refuge and flew for the first time into the night world of owls and crossed the Sea of Hoolemere. We know how difficult this must have been.”

Coryn took a step closer to the puffin. “And you, Dumpy, the debt we owe you is incalculable. You observed carefully, remembered all, and first flew to the polar bear. It was she who said ‘This is owl business’ and that you must go to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. And
you did! You found us and you related what you saw and what you heard with great intelligence.”

Dumpy blinked rapidly. “I think I’m going to faint.” His squat, usually well-balanced body suddenly wobbled. Bubo stepped in and propped him up.

“Here you go, lad. Now steady there.”

When Dumpy had regained his balance, Coryn continued. “It seems we have a situation developing here. There are two issues. First, the ember. Someone is hunting for it. Obviously someone knows it is no longer here at the great tree. How many owls know? Was this Boreal an agent for others? We cannot be sure. Bess?”

“It is possible, Coryn, that this owl was working alone. If there were others, why would they not have come to help? He duped me, yes, with the ruse of being poisoned. Had he come with cohorts, they could have easily infiltrated the palace while I…I…” She hesitated. “Tolled him to glaumora.”

“And instead, you sent him to hagsmire!” Twilight boomed. “I like it! I like it a lot! A most artistic balance. Like a good story. All set to rights in the end.”

Gylfie gave the Great Gray a withering look.

“Well,” Coryn said, “his part of the story has ended but we must try to set the rest to rights. Which brings me to the second issue. It appears that Nyra herself
is…is…” For the first time, Coryn faltered, then regained his confidence. “Is becoming more haggish. How this is happening, what peculiar physiological changes are occurring…” He swiveled his head toward Otulissa as if seeking some clue, some thread of an explanation.

“It’s very strange,” Otulissa said. “We have all read about hagsfiends in the past. The
Book of Kreeth
is mostly a speculative work on how one might create monstrous haggish offspring through various experiments. But what Dumpy describes suggests a morphological reversion to a more primitive form. We know from the battle in the canyonlands that in certain phases of the moon, given the right conditions and the ingestion of contaminated water, wolves, corrupt ones such as those of the MacHeath clan, could become vyrwolves, while other wolves were completely immune to such changes. Perhaps we have a similar situation here.”

Soren swiveled his head toward Otulissa. “These thoughts of yours are interesting, Otulissa, but we must plan. Now is not the time for speculation.”

“You are right, Soren.” Otulissa nodded in agreement.

“I think,” Soren said, swiveling his head toward his nephew, Coryn, “we need a plan to secure the ember. We can hope that the Boreal Owl Bess killed was the
only one who knew about it. If this is the case we must assume that he planned to steal it for his own purposes.”

“What purposes?” asked Digger.

“Well, perhaps he wanted to ransom it or sell it to the highest bidder. Perhaps he was planning to approach Nyra.”

“In any case,” Otulissa said, “the ember must be removed as soon as possible from the Palace of Mists. We have to assume that the palace is now vulnerable. It is just too risky to suppose that the Boreal was working alone.”

Bess sighed. “I am so glad you said that, Otulissa. The owl had battle claws. I killed him with the stone points. But I shudder to think what might have happened if that owl had brought fire into the palace.” A silence fell upon the group. The Palace of Mists possessed a treasury of books, maps, documents, and artifacts that had in the last few years advanced the culture and technologies of owls in ways they could never have imagined.

“But if we send someone to retrieve the ember,” Bubo said, “that owl could be followed.”

“That’s true,” Soren said slowly. He blinked his eyes shut for several seconds. Gylfie, Soren’s oldest friend, looked at him. After years of diving into forest fires his beak had lost its tawny glow and was permanently
smudged. But he still had that dark sparkle in his eyes, and his face feathers had retained their luster. The two owls knew each other so well that words were not always necessary. Right now, Gylfie sensed what Soren was thinking. “Gylfie,” Soren turned to the Elf Owl. “Do your remember back at St. Aggie’s when we discovered that Hortense was actually an infiltrator, and how she told us she had arrived there?”

“Of course!” Gylfie’s yellow eyes blazed. She knew exactly where Soren was heading with this. “HALO!” she exclaimed.