The Burning

by Kathryn Lasky

  “Uh…” Soren stepped onto the speaking perch from which owls addressed the members of the parliament. “I have been told just the preliminary details about this service that I am to perform—a passive combatant fire service, I believe.” The four elder owls nodded. “And I was wondering if perhaps we might have this discussion at Bubo’s forge. I think I will really understand better if Bubo can demonstrate.”

  “Good idea!” boomed Bubo.

  “But what about security?” Barran asked.

  “We can go far back in the cave,” Bubo said, “and if it eases your mind, I can set out a couple of nest-maids to guard the entrance.”

  “All right, then,” Boron said. “Shall we adjourn to Bubo’s forge?”

  Digger, Twilight, and Otulissa pressed their ear slits to the roots but there was total silence in the parliament hollow above. They blinked at one another. “What’s going on?” Otulissa beaked the words silently. Twilight and Digger shrugged. After five minutes of listening to nothing, the three owls gave up and went back to their respective hollows.

  Meanwhile, Soren, along with the four elder owls, crowded into the back of the cave of Bubo’s forge. Mrs. Plithiver had been called upon to guard the entrance. She was the most trustworthy of the nest-maid snakes and, unlike the others, was known never to gossip.

  Bubo pushed a small blue-green ember toward Soren. At the center of the ember was a pale lick of orange. Soren had never seen an ember quite this color.

  “That’s not bonk,” he said, staring down at the strangely glowing ember.

  “Hardly,” replied Bubo. “In fact, quite the opposite.”

  “What is it?” Soren asked.

  “It’s a cold coal.”

  “Is this what Otulissa was researching?”

  “Yep. Otulissa brought back the formula for cold fire and ice flames. And from these I made cold coals.”

  “Can it really help us in this war?” Soren asked. He had never been quite sure what it could do. Otulissa’s explanations were very complicated.

  “It can indeed,” said Ezylryb. “It can destroy flecks, and make Devil’s Triangles ineffective.”

  “Devil’s Triangles?” Soren echoed in a hushed voice. It had been a Devil’s Triangle made from strategically placed bags of flecks that had destroyed Ezylryb’s navigational instincts. It had taken him weeks to recover after the Chaw of Chaws had rescued him.

  “Yes, Soren, Devil’s Triangles. The Pure Ones who hold St. Aggie’s have the wherewithal now to construct more than enough triangles to defend themselves against any invaders. So…” Ezylryb continued.

  And so, thought Soren as he flew back to his hollow, that is what my passive combatant mission is. I do not teach Skench and Spoorn to fight, but I destroy the enemy’s ability to defend. It would not be just Soren’s mission alone. During the time that Otulissa, Digger, and the others would be teaching the remnant owls of St. Aggie’s who had escaped with Skench and Spoorn how to fight with fire, Bubo and Soren would fly into the rimrock of the canyonlands and place the small blue-green cold coals into every fleck emplacement they could find and thus destroy the magnetic powers of the Devil’s Triangles. It was a wonderous ember that Bubo had created in the fires of his forge; smokeless, barely glowing, with a deep, mysteriously penetrating form of heat, strong enough to destroy flecks at close range but not warm enough to ignite any nearby wood or leaves.

  Soren almost wished this night were over and he wouldn’t have to face Digger and Twilight and Otulissa. He was not to say a word about his alternative service. It would begin tomorrow and take several days, as would the training of Skench and Spoorn and their troops. Soren didn’t want his friends asking questions or looking at him all funny, as they had done ever since he had told them that he was a gizzard resister. Gizzard matters were private, anyhow. There were some things that one didn’t discuss, not even with one’s best friend.

  Soren sighed heavily and his gizzard gave a painful lurch. Gylfie! Would he ever see her again? Soren entered the hollow quietly. Twilight and Digger were still asleep. Kicking a few tufts of rabbit-ear moss to the top of the heap, he settled himself into his mess of a nest and, despite his worries, soon fell sound asleep.

  The rabbit-ear moss around Soren’s body folded him into a wonderful softness. I should be more particular about my nest and get more of this moss. But then the mossy softness began to dissolve into something else. How curious, he thought, for he could still feel the softness but it was as if it were becoming fog. A huge fog bank began to surge around him. Am I flying or am I sleeping? He felt an uncomfortable twinge in his gizzard. This was just like the fog that Gylfie had disappeared into. Maybe I can find her. I must find her. I must! Soren continued flying through the mossy fog, looking for the tiny speck of an Elf Owl. He blinked. In the distance, he saw something glimmering faintly. It was like a dim, pulsating golden light, and he was drawn toward it. But every time he thought he was near, it grew dimmer and receded deeper into the thick fog. And sometimes he thought he heard the soft strains of a song. The song wrapped around him like a vaporous mist, but then it simply melted away. This was a very strange world he was flying through. His senses seemed turned upside down. There were things that one usually heard—like a song—that he could almost feel, and there were things that one usually felt—like the softness of the moss—that he was seeing instead, as if it were a fog. Fog or moss? What is going on?

  Suddenly, he heard a huge clap of thunder. A flash of lightning splintered the sky. Spume from the sea, branches, small animals were hurling past him, torn up from the earth below by the violence of the storm. There was another bone-shattering crack of thunder, and then, in a white-hot bolt of lightning that fractured the night, he saw the dark silhouette of an Elf Owl frantically beating her wings. “Gylfie!” he cried out. “Gylfie!”

  Someone was shaking him. “Wake up, Soren! Wake up!”

  “Digger! What time is it?”

  “Late. You almost slept through tweener. Cook still has some good roasted vole left, and I think there are a few slices of milkberry tart. Bubo’s waiting for you, too, and says to hurry along.”

  “Oh, yeah, Bubo,” Soren replied sleepily and then remembered that tonight was the night they were to begin their secret mission—cold coal drops into the fleck emplacements.

  “Soren?” Digger said tentatively. Soren hoped that Digger wasn’t going to ask him any questions about tonight’s mission.

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  “Soren, were you dreaming about Gylfie?”

  “Dreaming? I don’t think so.” And he didn’t think he had been dreaming about her. But this was how it was with Soren. He often didn’t remember a dream—until it became real.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Deep in Enemy Territory

  Just think of it, Kludd, this dear egg will hatch during the eclipse.” Nyra looked at the egg that lay in the downy nest she had made in their rock hollow in the canyonlands of St. Aggie’s. “Although I still grieve for the egg your horrid sister, Eglantine, destroyed, now we shall have a chick who will hatch as the moon is eclipsing. And you know what that means?”

  “Yes, yes.” Kludd tried not to sound impatient. He had heard this story so many times it was becoming boring. But it was a good sign, an important sign. Nyra herself had been hatched on the night of a lunar eclipse. It was said that when an owl was hatched on the night of an eclipse, an enchantment would be cast upon that bird, a powerful charm that made for a powerful owl. Some said the charm could be good and lead to greatness of spirit, but it could also be bad and lead to a profound evil. Nyra, however, had no time for thoughts of good and evil. She only believed in power. If an owl were powerful enough, it did not matter if they were what others called “good” or “evil.” These words had no meaning for her.

  Kludd had more on his mind than the hatching of his first chick. That chick might not be the only thing to arrive on the night of the lunar eclipse. That night could just as easily be the one on which th
e invasion began. It made perfect sense for the Guardians of Ga’Hoole to launch their invasion on a night when the moon would be blotted out by the shadow of the sun moving slowly across it. It would be the perfect cover for them. That was why Kludd had insisted that they find a hollow not right within the rocky fortress of St. Aggie’s, but out on its periphery.

  But when would these confounded owls come? When would they launch their invasion? He had fortified the rimrock surrounding St. Aggie’s as best he could with fleck emplacements. He had guards placed on the highest point of every promontory. Any foreign owl would be spotted immediately. He had promoted his two top lieutenants, Uglamore and Stryker, to the positions of division commanders and they had set up garrisons at the two main approaches to St. Aggie’s: the boulder of the Great Horns, where two peaks rose into the sky like the tufts of a gigantic Great Horned Owl, and then at the point of entry called the Beak of Glaux. Patrols flew night and day guarding both areas. No crow dared approach during the day with these fiercely clawed owls commanding the skies. A hireclaw owl from Beyond the Beyond had turned out to be an excellent blacksmith. And he would make fire claws! Fire claws were special battle claws with small coals inserted in the tips. These claws were the most dangerous of all weapons, for they allowed an owl to fight at close range while simultaneously ripping and burning an opponent. They were considered “dirty weapons.” Many blacksmiths refused to make them because they not only did damage to the enemy but over time they disfigured an owl’s own talons.

  The Pure Ones had been practicing fighting with ignited branches, as well as using the fire claws. Kludd was ready. He was ready for war. Ready for the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, and most of all he was ready for Soren, his brother. He snapped his metal beak shut, blinked his eyes behind the metal mask, and imagined his claws tearing into his brother’s flesh. He could see the blood splattering the night. He could hear the breath leaking from his brother’s windpipe, the gasping, ragged breaths of a dying owl, of Soren.

  On a high battlement of the Beak of Glaux, Uglamore crimped his talons over a narrow lip of rock and scanned the sky. When will they come? When? Logic dictated that the invasion would come on a moonless night, or a night thick with cloud cover. Cloud cover was rare here, just as trees were rare. They had solved that by importing kindling for fighting with fire from Ambala and the Shadow Forest, but one cannot control the moon or command the clouds. A breeze riffled his feathers, and a shiver went though his gizzard. There was no telling with these owls, the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. Logic did not dictate to them. Nothing dictated to them, as a matter of fact. And this was eternally confounding to Uglamore. The owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree were completely free, free to do anything. They knew no discipline, at least not the discipline of the Pure Ones, or of St. Aggie’s. They seemed to fly in loose ragtag groups, compared to the tightly drilled formations of the Pure Ones.

  And yet the Guardians had won the last battle in The Beaks even though they had been completely outnumbered. What a ruse they had pulled when they had led the Pure Ones to think that they had entire divisions at the ready, divisions from the Northern Kingdoms, when in actuality they had had none! How did a bunch of undisciplined owls come up with such an idea? The Pure Ones had come so very close to beating them, and yet it was the Pure Ones who had been forced into an ignominious retreat. The Guardians’ victory had nothing to do with skill or discipline, but everything to do with wits. They had won it on wits alone.

  Uglamore had not stopped thinking about this ever since. All the battle strategies of the Pure Ones were planned by either the High Tyto or his mate, Her Pureness, Nyra. There was a central chain of command with them at the top, and which went down through the Barn Owl lieutenants. Beneath the Barn Owl lieutenants were the Grass and the Masked Owls, and finally down through the ranks to the very lowest rung on the ladder of pureness, the Sooty Owls. They were all Barn Owls of some sort, and they all had the word Tyto in their formal names. But some Tytos were considered more pure than others. And this, too, gave Uglamore pause. The Guardians of Ga’Hoole were just a big hodgepodge of every kind of owl in the owl universe. It was said they even had a Brown Fish Owl among them who was in charge of a unit in the Flame Squadron, and there was a Burrowing Owl who ranked quite high as well.

  So what did it all mean? Uglamore wasn’t quite sure. But he was beginning to question things in a way he had never before questioned, and it was almost frightening to him. And most frightening of all was thinking about what these owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree might think up next. They had notions that no other owls had ever dreamed of. Uglamore nearly laughed out loud at the very thought. Dream—racdrops! We don’t dream. We don’t think. And then it suddenly burst like a great illuminating star in Uglamore’s brain. Not thinking was exactly the meaning of being a member of the Pure Ones. But it is easier this way, Uglamore told himself. It truly is. One can be too smart for one’s own good. Can’t one?

  A fine drizzle had begun to fall. Neither Uglamore nor any of the other owls at the garrisons or watch rocks noticed the two owls who had walked past them into the canyonlands. The troops of all the garrisons were, of course, looking up and out and not down.

  When Soren and Bubo finally took to wing after walking, they lofted themselves into very low-level flight a few feet above the ground. Soren marveled at how Otulissa’s research at the Glauxian Brothers’ library had advanced the Guardians’ knowledge of flecks. The discovery of cold fire and cold coals had revolutionized the way in which Devil’s Triangles could be neutralized. Furthermore, armed with Otulissa’s knowledge, Bubo had devised a more efficient way to detect the deadly triangles. Now Bubo and Soren carried with them what they called a true stone. Sometimes fragments of meteorites survive their passage through Earth’s atmosphere and hit the ground. A “true stone” was a fragment from a particular kind of meteorite, which was rich in iron. Through experimentation, Bubo discovered that a small needle-sized sliver from one of these fragments would vibrate at a high rate when approaching a concentration of flecks and would swing to point to the source. In the past, in order to protect themselves from the brain-and-gizzard-damaging flecks, the owls had had to fly with mu metal shields. Flying with the heavy shields for long periods of time was awkward. But now even that had been improved. Bubo had forged lightweight helmets of mu metal for them to wear.

  Bubo was carrying the true stone in his talons. Soren followed with the bucket of cold coals. He saw Bubo veer sharply to port and then ascend in tight spirals up the face of a cliff. Soren followed. With a prearranged signal, Bubo angled his one wing and ruddered his tail feathers. Soren flew in. There it was: an innocent-looking little pile of flecks on a narrow shelf carefully surrounded by small rocks so as not to be disturbed. Soren dropped the cold coal in. There was a brief dim glow, no smoke, and a slight sizzle. That’s that, thought Soren, now on to the next emplacement, and flew off behind Bubo, who had begun descending to the lower airspace that so far had hidden them from the sentries on watch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A Song in the Night

  It had not taken Gylfie long to get the hang of flying the smee holes. Twilla had accompanied her as far as the southernmost peninsula of the Ice Talons. From that point there was a short stretch of water to fly across, but Twilla assured her that very deep under the water’s surface in this region of the Everwinter Sea there was a volcano and the boiling lava in its crater created an underwater smee hole, which vented directly out of the sea, causing thermal updrafts.

  “Don’t worry, Gylfie. You’ll do fine,” Twilla said as they lighted down on the ledge of a cliff on the tip of the Ice Talons.

  “B-b-but, Twilla,” Gylfie stammered.

  “I cannot go any farther with you. I must return to the Glauxian retreat. I must tell the brothers of this betrayal by Ifghar and Gragg. You will do fine, Gylfie. I am going to give you a song to sing. It will ease you on your flight. It is a short song but you must learn it right now by heart and by gizzard. Twilla began
to sing the song in Krakish but by now Gylfie could understand the words.

  Set your wings upon the sea wind

  Set your eyes upon the steam

  Feel the billow of the updraft

  And believe in your dream

  Know the mercy of these waters

  Know the safety of the sky

  Hear the voices in the distance

  And believe—they will not lie.

  “It’s a beautiful song, Twilla. Where did you ever hear it?”

  “Oh, I didn’t just hear it. I composed it. I was once a skog. Do you know what a skog is?”

  “Yes, we met one on Dark Fowl Island. She was a Snowy named Snorri.”

  “Ah, yes, Snorri. I know her well. Skog of Moss’s clan, a very big, important clan. Most of the skogs are Snowies. It was unusual for a Short-eared Owl like myself to be selected. But my clan was rather small.”

  “So why aren’t you still a skog?”

  “There are no more stories to tell. No more songs to sing.”

  “What?” Gylfie blinked. “I…I don’t understand.”

  “Except for myself, my clan was completely wiped out, massacred.”

  “No!” Gylfie gasped.

  “Yes, massacred in the War of the Ice Claws. Ifghar led the attack. It was wanton murder. He need not have killed them all. But he did, even the owl chicks.”