The War of the Ember (8 page)

I
n the Northern Kingdoms, there is a promontory that juts out into the Everwinter Sea, which is called the Ice Talons. On the southwest side of the Ice Talons, a thread of water penetrates deep into the interior of that frozen landscape and, on either side, spires of ice, twisted and turned by time and wind, rise wraithlike in the fog-shrouded air of that canyon. The spires are connected by ice bridges and arches and behind the walls of the canyon winds a complex maze of tunnels and channels. In ancient times, during a series of desperate wars, it had served as a stronghold, a hidden redoubt for the H’rathian monarchs, and upon one occasion, the widowed queen Siv had come here with her faithful servant, Myrrthe. With them they brought the egg from which the greatest of all kings would hatch: King Hoole, the first holder of the ember.

The canyon was, however, also known to be a passageway in ancient times, a shortcut for hagsfiends, who
were said to have a refuge on the other side of the promontory, far from salt water. Hagsfiends liked to be as far from the ocean as possible. They feared salt water, for it destroyed their oil-less feathers, and, when drenched in briny water, they nearly always drowned instantly. They would rush through this narrow watery channel to get to dry land, hardly ever slowing to explore the tangled passageways of the cliffs.

And now two owls, who should have had no reason to fear water but were feeling nervous nonetheless, were making their way not to the dry land that had been the hagsfiends’ redoubt—for they knew nothing of that place—but instead to another refuge deep within the ice cliffs. They carried in their botkins two dozen double- and triple-yolked eggs of monsters.

“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Nyra asked.

“Yes. Your son, Coryn, told me of this place. Or rather he read to me part of the legend of the first collier, which described it.”

“His name is Nyroc. Not Coryn. I named him Nyroc. He ceased to be my son when he renamed himself Coryn. How far must we fly? Are you trying to find the exact spot where this ancient queen brought her egg?”

“Not the exact spot. Just a safe place for our experiments. And, even though many more eggs are coming, we can’t afford to lose another one.” He paused, then turned his head toward Nyra. “Everything has gone so well. Our troops in Kuneer are trained, organized. They will be ready to join us on Long Night. This is the last part of the plan, but the most important.”

Nyra did not like the way the Striga had called them
“our
troops.” She, in fact, was the one who had gathered the ragtag remnants of Pure Ones and rebuilt them into a fighting force. Yes, more troops had come and were coming to the Northern Kingdoms from the Dragon Court. But the backbone of this army, at present, was Pure Ones. However, she kept quiet about that. “We could have finished off those puffins that came looking for their brother in a snap,” Nyra said. “Puffins are stupid. It would have been easy.”

The Striga had to refrain from saying, “You’re stupid.” Instead, he replied, “Those puffins’ bodies would have been discovered sooner or later. Rumors would start. It was better to get out as quickly as possible. We are just lucky that the one dragon owl got out with her botkin of eggs the night before.”

“I suppose that’s true. We didn’t lose much. One egg went rolling into the water and another got smashed on
the floor of the ice cave. But do you think that dragon owl who got out will find her way to the Ice Cliff Palace? What’s her name?”

“Olong,” the Striga said. “She is named for the color of her feathers. It means sapphire in our language. She’s smart. She’ll find her way. Now try not to worry. Many of these eggs are double- and triple-yolked. This is our starter batch. The converts are bringing in more.” The “converts” were those Dragon Court owls who had surreptitiously been learning to fly and, one by one, or, on rare occasions, two by two, had been leaving the Panqua Palace. With the help of corrupt servants they were purloining eggs and bringing them to the Northern Kingdoms. Until now they had been stashing them in the most remote regions, inhabited, if at all, by the pirate owls, the kraals, who most other creatures tried to avoid. The eggs were sterile when they had been imported from the Middle Kingdom, but with proper brooding, unlike normal sterile eggs, they could be made to quicken and finally to hatch. This was part of the peculiar mystery, the terrible secret of a hagsfiend’s genesis.

“And to think I nearly had my talons on that book. I had tried to read it but it was very hard to understand,” Nyra whined.

“But you remembered some of it. And between us—look, Nyra! Look what we have already achieved. I should be pulling out my feathers in punishment, for the first time I ever heard Coryn mention the
Book of Kreeth,
I didn’t have the wits to ask him more. I even got a glimpse of it one time in the library. You are indeed the better bird. You figured out its value.”

If there was one thing the Striga knew, it was how to flatter. It was flattery that fueled the feckless life of the Dragon Court, and fawning adulation was its lifeblood.

The Striga thought back on that night when he had first glimpsed the
Book of Kreeth.
It seemed a lifetime ago. (Indeed, the blue owl was beginning to suspect that he had had many lifetimes. It was as if echoes from a long-forgotten past would sometimes reverberate through his brain.) On that particular night he now recalled that Otulissa had accidentally left a small cabinet in a back hollow of the library unlocked, and he had slipped into it to peek. What he found was a volume entitled the
Book of Kreeth,
and it puzzled him. It was mostly illustrations. But it made no sense whatsoever and he had thought the strange pictures were something to do with loathsome vanities. Just as well it be locked away. How stupid he had been!

At last the two owls with their precious cargo found a narrow opening in the ice cliffs. “I think this should do,” the Striga said with relief.

“Is this the Ice Palace?” Nyra asked.

“I’m not sure if it is the Ice Palace proper. But I think we can be safe here. And now to construct a good schneddenfyrr,” the Striga said.

“A schnedden…what?”

“A schneddenfyrr. It is an old Krakish word for ‘ice nest.’ That is what the owls of the Northern Kingdoms use because they lack trees, hence no tree hollows for eggs.”

The Striga busied himself settling the eggs in ice nests. Nyra followed suit.

“You learned a lot,” Nyra said.

“I learned it from your son and Otulissa and Soren. They aren’t stupid, you know.”

Nyra glared as he spoke.

“You must learn, Nyra dear, to use your enemies.”

She did not like the intimacy of his tone. She was about to object but held her tongue. The Striga was right. One must learn to use one’s enemies. And who knew, when the ember was hers, who her enemies might be? Perhaps the Striga! The dark, grayish eggs were the means to the ember. But the ember would only be possessed by
one owl, and she planned to be that owl. So she would hold her tongue now and indulge this blue owl, who seemed to revel in these terms of endearment. A thought suddenly occurred to her—
Is he trying to woo me? Woo me as one would woo a mate?
Would she have shared the ember with her long-dead mate, Kludd, with whom she had brought that unruly son into the world? Once her gizzard had sung for dear Kludd. But
let’s be practical. An ember cannot be divided,
she thought. And who would want to be queen to someone else’s king when indeed she could be both king and queen?

She quietly observed the blue owl, who was fussing like an old nest-maid snake over this schnedden-whatever, arranging the eggs just so. He, too, seemed absorbed in private thoughts, but he now began to speak and what he said stirred something deep in Nyra. “Of course, you, of all owls, know of the curse of one who is hatched on the night of a lunar eclipse.”

“I suppose,” Nyra answered cagily, “that it depends on your viewpoint, whether it be a curse or not.”

“True. Nevertheless, they say an enchantment is cast upon those hatchlings, a charm that leads to great power. Hoole was hatched on the night of a lunar eclipse. And he retrieved the ember for the first time.”

“And so was my son,” Nyra replied.

“And he became king, as well,” the Striga said softly.

Nyra remembered the night. It was just after the end of the War of Fire and Ice, which was sometimes called the War of the Great Burning. She was soon lost in the reveries of that night Nyroc had hatched.

“Nyra, you are the one who explained to me that Kreeth was not only interested in creating strange monsters that were odd crossbreeds, but she had dabbled in creating a new strain of hagsfiends. You said they hatch from eggs such as these on the night of a lunar eclipse. Thanks to your diplomatic efforts with my brethren, the converts from the Panqua Palace, the eggs have been secured. Their contribution was great but yours is
immeasurable.
It was a setback when we were surprised in that cave in the Ice Narrows. But these eggs will be safe. The rest will be taken directly to the kraals’ territory. The ice nests are readied. All we need to do is fetch those eggs and the broodies from the kraal region and lead them to the Ice Cliffs for the final days of brooding before the eclipse when the quickening begins. In all, we will have nearly one hundred eggs! A company! A company of hagsfiends!”

“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.

C
oryn 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?