The Burning

by Kathryn Lasky

  On the point of one of the thousands of red needles that pricked the night, illuminated by the flashes of lightning, the commander for the invasion perched. From his vantage point, Ezylryb could observe the entire canyon. Through a series of prearranged wing-code signals, in which he would flap and fold his wings in odd motions, he would direct this battle. Smaller owls, mostly Elfs and Pygmies, had been trained to interpret these signals and fly at what they called streak speed to relay them to unit commanders. In the history of the owl universe there had never been an undertaking as difficult, as complicated as this one. But Ezylryb silently pledged, We shall do it. We must do it.

  After the ignition of the brush piles, the first wave of the Bonk Brigade, led by Bubo, with Soren second in command, headed directly for the heart of St. Aggie’s—the library where the flecks were stored. Their mission was very specific: Penetrate the library and set cold coals in each one of the niches. It was in that direction that Soren flew with Skench, his old nemesis, next to him. There had been no choice. Skench, the Great Horned Owl and former Ablah General of St. Aggie’s, knew all the shortcuts into the library.

  “This way,” the Great Horned Owl said as she waggled her port wing.

  The old fool doesn’t even know port from starboard, Soren muttered softly. How had such stupidity ever succeeded in building this evil place, he wondered. Ruby and Martin were also flying in this unit. As soon as they finished at the library, they were to fly back to a reignition brush pile as fast as they could. At this point, the Bonk Brigade would split. Bubo and the rest of the brigade would ignite their fire weapons. Soren, Ruby, and Martin, along with Twilight, would arm themselves with the few ice weapons they had brought back from the Northern Kingdoms and join the battle, which by that time would be raging. But even as it raged, the deadly supply of flecks would be growing weaker and weaker until, Glaux willing, all owls would live in a fleck-free world forever and a day. “Forever and a Day” was the code name of the invasion. Ezylryb had named it and the name seemed both hopeful and bold. It must work, thought Soren. It just must.

  Meanwhile, the Sooty Owl Dustytuft had recovered himself a second before going into a yeep splat on the canyon floor. Weakly climbing out of his yeepness, he as-cended and tried to focus on what he must do. He must fly as quickly as possible to the main garrison of the Great Horns and speak to Stryker. He must tell him exactly what he had seen. He was working on his speech as he flew. No one ever listened to Sooties, but they would this time. He would be precise and clear. Here is what I am going to say, he thought. I was flying patrol on the eastern section of the Needles when I first spotted the piles of brush…

  He must have been flying faster than he thought. He saw Stryker on a ridge midway between the Beak of Glaux and the Great Horns shaking a talon at Uglamore. He forgot his speech entirely and, even before he had landed, he started screaming in the high piercing whistle of Sooties. “They’re coming! They’re coming! The invasion is here! They came over the Needles! The invasion is here!”

  There was a sudden wind shift and Dustytuft’s words seemed to slam back into his beak. But he screamed again even louder this time, and all the owls of the garrison heard him and seemed to suddenly wilf. Finally, he thought. Finally, someone has listened to me.

  The library was located in one of the highest reaches of St. Aggie’s, with one port opening directly into the sky. It was through this port that Soren and the rest of the owls descended and quickly overpowered the two guards who were stunned beyond belief to see their old Ablah General. Skench attacked the first one viciously. The attack was enough to make the other owl go yeep as he saw the blood from the torn wing of his fellow guard. The owl stood perfectly still with her wings drooping.

  Soren blinked as he looked around. This was the very stone chamber studded with fleck-filled niches from which he and Gylfie had escaped. Not simply escaped but flown for the first time in their lives. It was here that Grimble, who had risked everything to teach them to fly, had died defending them. Murdered by Skench. Soren could barely look at the Great Horned Owl.

  They had to work fast. They were without battle claws, for if they had worn them the magnetic attraction of the flecks for the metal claws would have been too great. However, they were wearing mu metal helmets to protect their brains from the disorienting effect of the flecks. Soren was directing Ruby and Martin to the niches. Quickly, the owls dropped cold coals into each one.

  “All niches filled and accounted for?” Bubo barked.

  “Yes,” Skench replied.

  “I ain’t asking you. I’m asking Soren.” Bubo didn’t trust the Great Horned Owl any farther than he could yarp a pellet. He wouldn’t put it past the miserable owl to have some flecks tucked away in some unknown niche.

  “Yes, Bubo,” Soren answered. “These are all the niches.”

  “Good. Then let’s get out of here and back to our claws. The real fight is about to begin.”

  With that, the five owls flapped their wings and rose directly out of the stone shaft that was the library.

  How hard it had been for him, Soren recalled, that first flight. Straight up—the most difficult kind of takeoff for inexperienced fliers, which both he and Gylfie had been. But would he ever forget that first sensation once they were out of the shaft and airborne in the dark clarity of a starry night? Soren blinked now. His eyes stung. There were no stars. There was no darkness. What had happened? The air roiled with fog, but his eyes were stinging. This wasn’t fog. It was smoke. The canyonlands were on fire!

  An owl came tearing through the night. It was nearly the same color as the smoke. “Twilight!” Soren called. “What’s happening?”

  “A complete wind shift. Everything was so dry. The canyons are on fire.”

  But aside from their ignition piles what was there to burn? Soren wondered. There was hardly a tree in this rock landscape. But then he remembered. There were all sorts of low-growing scrubby woody plants, and they were dry as tinder. In one spot the smoke cleared, and when he looked down, Soren gasped. It was as if a molten red sea was spreading across the canyonlands. Soren was a collier and used to flying into forest fires, diving between flame columns, but how did one fly in this? The smoke was terrible. The even layer of rising heat was pushing them too far up.

  “What in the world do we do with this?” Martin, who was one of the finest small-ember retrievers the colliers had, flew up on Soren’s port wing.

  “I have no idea. How are the low fliers going to operate?”

  Ruby next flew up. There was a nearly hysterical pitch to her voice. Soren had never seen her like this. “The Pure Ones have most of the first and second assault units pressed in between the two horns of the Great Horns ridge.”

  “Do you mean the rest of the Bonk Brigade and the Strix Struma Strikers?” Bubo asked.

  “I’m afraid so. And Ezylryb can’t see a thing from his perch. The entire code system has broken down,” Ruby continued.

  “Can we at least get back to our weapons?” Soren asked.

  “We can try,” Ruby replied. “Twilight is heading that way now.”

  When they arrived at the weapons cache, they were greeted by the sight of Twilight flying through the smoke wielding a flaming branch in each of his battle-clawed talons and lashing out at two Barn Owls and a Screech Owl that Soren recognized as an old St. Aggie’s lieutenant. Suddenly he saw the Screech Owl stop mid-flight, wheel around, and lash out at Twilight. The Great Gray staggered in the air.

  Bubo and Soren dove for the faltering Twilight, but the Screech Owl was back on them in a flash—with Skench! What side is Skench on? Soren’s gizzard lurched. He seized the branch that was about to fall from Twilight’s talons. He swung it and with a mighty whack, Skench went spinning down, down, down, her primaries in flames.

  “Watch your tail feathers, Soren!” Bubo shouted. The burly blacksmith was supporting Twilight in flight now.

  Then out of nowhere, flying so fast as to be nothing more than a blur in this night of
smoke and flames, came Martin. A deadly ice splinter glittered in his talons. The Screech Owl blinked as if trying to figure out what was coming at him. In that split second of the Screech Owl’s confusion, Martin launched the splinter. Like a missile, it whizzed through the air. The Screech Owl gasped, rolled over, and fell to earth—the ice splinter piercing its breast, a trickle of blood already staining the feathers red.

  “Is Twilight all right?” Soren flew to a shelf of rock where Twilight perched next to Bubo.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine,” Twilight said grumpily.

  “A little shaky, but he’s all right,” Bubo said.

  “I am not shaky.” And as if to prove it Twilight lifted off and headed toward the stash of ice weapons on a higher ledge. The other owls followed.

  Quentin, an elderly Barred Owl who no longer fought, was the quartermaster tending the weapons at this cache. Battle claws, the branches for ignition, and all manner of ice weapons, from splinters to daggers, swords, and scimitars, were in his care.

  “What’ll it be, sir?” Quentin said, addressing Bubo.

  “Ice weapons for these young’uns who’ve had the training on Dark Fowl. And I’ll take my usual.” Bubo’s usual was a pierced metal ball full of bonk coals attached to the end of a link chain. It was called a flail, or a fizgig, and it was an extraordinarily difficult weapon to use. But Bubo was an expert. The ball became red hot when swung in a rapid circular motion and could wreak havoc in a thicket of hostile owls, scattering them like dried leaves in a crisp breeze.

  “Battle claws first, before picking up your weapons, if I might recommend,” Quentin said in a soft voice.

  “Of course, Q.”

  Quentin was a very formal owl. He picked up the battle claws that Ezylryb had given to Soren. “If I may, sir, it would be a great honor.”

  Bubo sighed. “All right, Q. Assist Soren, but the rest of us shall claw ourselves. We must get to the front as fast as we can.”

  In a matter of minutes, the owls were clawed and airborne with their weapons. Smoke roiled through the night, but rain pelted through the thickness of the smoke and when a loud clap of thunder broke, the lightning appeared like a fuzzy white filament in the grayness. Soren thought that this was the oddest atmosphere he had ever flown in. But did it seem familiar to him in some way? Had there not been another time when a strange thickness in the air surrounded him? No, it had not been smoke. Fog! Suddenly, it burst upon him: It was his dream. The dream he had forgotten completely. He felt a shudder in his gizzard. In the dream it had been rabbit-ear moss that had swaddled him. And then somehow, in some bizarre way, the moss had transformed itself into fog. The flying was more difficult now. Soren wept tears from the smoke, and his lungs ached. But the dream was coming back to him and, in the distance, he saw something glimmering just as he had in the dream. A dim, golden pulsating glow. I must fly on! he thought. The glow intensified. His eyes watered. He coughed. But he flew on.

  “Dasgadden gut vrinhkne mi issen blaue,” said the little Pygmy Owl.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this, either,” Gylfie replied and squinted through her own issen blaue goggles. The twin peaks of the Great Horns lay just ahead, wrapped in a soft fuzziness almost like rabbit-ear moss. Was it smoke? She blinked. It was all coming true. The dream was coming true. Ahead in the smoke she spotted him, her dearest friend in all the world. Soren! Her heart, her gizzard, her mind cried out.

  And, in that same moment, a sudden blast of frigid air blew a tunnel through the smoke. At the other end of this tunnel, Soren saw something astonishing. “My dream is coming true,” Soren whispered to himself. “I have found her at last.” As the smoke thinned in the scattered light of the moon, two dreams were about to merge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Battle of Fire and Ice

  It’s the Frost Beaks!” Twilight shouted.

  “The Frost Beaks,” Ruby echoed, “and look what’s behind them! The Glauxspeed artillery flying with Kielian snakes!”

  Soren would never forget the sight. Hundreds of owls, their ice weapons glistening in the night, filled the sky. Turquoise, emerald-green, and deep blue snakes coiled up into the air from their perches on the backs of the larger owls.

  An unusually small Northern Saw-whet flew in beside Bubo. “Colonel Frost Blossom, sir, commander of E company of the Frost Beaks division.” The tiny owl spoke in a thick Krakish accent. “What’s the situation?”

  “They have two of our elite units pressed into an air trench between the Horns. They’re as good as trapped. Have no idea how many casualties they’ve sustained.”

  “I see you have a melee weapon with that flail there.”

  “Nothing beats a fizgig to break up a throng of them birds. Could use a few more,” Bubo said.

  “We have ice flails. I think our strategy should be to send in the flails first. Would you like to lead, sir?”

  “Yes, ma’am…I mean, Colonel Frost Blossom.”

  “Just call me Bloss. Most do.”

  The little Northern Saw-whet banked steeply and returned to her unit to give the order.

  Soren had not yet had a chance to speak to Gylfie. They had been ordered into a holding pattern, and no one was supposed to move out of formation. Except now Soren saw Twilight doing just that. The Great Gray broke away and was spiraling up toward a high ridge where dozens upon dozens of vultures were perched, waiting eerily for their next meal—the carrion of owls. Vultures were a gruesome sight. After a battle the Guardians of Ga’Hoole always removed their dead before a vulture could descend upon the body. They often kept them away with fire and when not with fire…It was beginning to make sense to Soren. Who had always gone into deal with the vultures? Twilight. But why now? The battle was not over. The vultures never went down in the thick of things. For all of their loathsome ways, they were very cowardly birds. Why now, Twilight?

  Twilight flew up to the ridge. The orders had come to Twilight by a messenger, a Pygmy Owl, direct from Ezylryb. What a smart old bird he is, thought Twilight. Here he can’t see the battle for the smoke, but he knew where those vultures would be. This would be a fine piece of work, and Twilight would enjoy doing it. He gathered speed and, with an ice sword gripped in his talons, headed directly for the vultures.

  The immense birds, spectral and dark, their wings hanging like black rags at their sides, looked up.

  “Whatcha want?” one squawked. Twilight was flying in circles over them. He dived now and slashed at the nearest vulture’s tail feathers with his ice sword. Several of the feathers drifted off into the wind.

  “Ouch! Whatcha do that for?”

  “No big deal,” Twilight snarled. “So you’ll fly a little funny on your way to eat dead soldiers. Who’s next?” Twilight churred loudly. The vultures began to shake with fear. “Listen up, you idiots, you stinking scum, you lousy frinking birds. You’re all going to lose your tail feathers real fast unless you do what I say.”

  “What’s that? What’s that? Anything you say, Twilight,” they all began to speak at once. They had encountered Twilight before. Usually, he just squawked one of his jangling rhymes and chased them off, but now he was carrying this strange glistening thing, and he had just sliced off those tail feathers before any one of them could half blink.

  “All right, I want your miserable butts over on those horns. Half of you on one horn. The other half on the other.”

  “Why?” asked one of the vultures.

  “Because I say so,” roared Twilight.

  “Do we get anything for doing this—like extra dead meat?”

  “You get to keep your frinking tail feathers, bozo!” And he swung the ice sword in a glittering arc. The vultures shrieked and rose in the air. Twilight followed, herding them along with his ice sword flashing in the night. Only a bird such as Twilight could find artistic inspiration in a moment like this as he drove the vultures toward the Great Horns. But inspired he was, and he could not resist.

  I’ve had enough of your vulture cultu
re.

  Now hustle on, you stink butt birds,

  Hustle on and hear my words.

  You’re cowards, and I’ll slice you up,

  Then feed you to the wolves for sup.

  You got splat for brains,

  Your gizzards are lame

  And now you’re going to play my game!

  “Get on over there, you rotten bum of a bird…Hee-yaw! Hoo-hoo!” Twilight hollered into the night, flashing his ice sword inches from the vultures’ tails. The phalanx of black birds followed by the sweeping arcs of the gleaming sword made an eerie vision in the night. Whooping and hollering like an owl possessed, Twilight drove forty vultures toward the tips of the Great Horns.

  Twilight caught a fleeting glimpse of one of the Pure Ones’ hireclaws go yeep. Then another and another. Psychological warfare, Ezylryb had called it. Well, it seemed to be working. Hireclaws were a skittish lot in their own way. Like the pirates of the Northern Kingdoms, they held a lot of strange beliefs and superstitions. And the one thing they dreaded more than anything else were vultures on the battlefield on the night of a wolf moon.

  Otulissa breathed a deep sigh of relief as she saw a gap in the air trench suddenly open. She had been fighting as hard as she could with her ice dagger, and now she saw Martin coming in with an ice splinter. Backup was here at last. “Port side, Otulissa!” Bubo bellowed. She wheeled just in time to see a Barn Owl flying toward her. It was the one they called Stryker. She recognized him from the battle in The Beaks. His battle claws were extended, and he held a burning branch. It was going to be her ice dagger against his burning branch. They aren’t any good at this, Otulissa told herself. They are battle claw fighters. They have just learned how to fight with fire. She tried to remember the lessons from Dark Fowl, about fighting with an ice dagger against an enemy with a burning branch. It was scary because she must wait for the attack, luring the attacker in closer and closer, then begin a series of deceptive moves, or feints. But Stryker’s branch was longer than her ice dagger. Otulissa feinted, moving quickly from one side of Stryker to the other. A little more of this, she thought, and I will be able to make a contact thrust. Otulissa began darting about, sometimes back-winging and actually pushing herself into a defensive posture. If I can get him to think he’s got me pinned against this cliff…It was a terribly dangerous maneuver, because if he did actually pin Otulissa there would be no escape.