The River of Wind

by Kathryn Lasky

  “H’ryth,” Otulissa broke in. “I just figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?” asked Martin, who was flying under Otulissa’s port wing for protection.

  “The word. What it means.”

  “Yeah?” said Twilight. “So, what does it mean?”

  “Innermost part of the gizzard in old Krakish. These owls’ connections with the Northern Kingdoms are much greater than we ever imagined,” Otulissa said.

  The wind was now shrieking through a corrugated landscape of ice cliffs and spires, not dissimilar from parts of the Northern Kingdoms, especially before the time of the first Great Melt, which was a period just after the era of the legends. At that time, a warm maverick wind from the south had blown for moon cycle after moon cycle, year after year, and the vast glaciers and towering icy peaks had begun to dissolve. But now as they flew, they could feel a wind snaking through narrow valleys, piling up amid ice and rock ridges and escarpments, creating a violent high-pressure strata of air in which their flight became quite tumultuous.

  “Be careful here!” Tengshu called out.

  “Careful!” Ruby said. She, however, was mad for this air and was flying like an owl possessed.

  “Get back into formation, Ruby,” Coryn barked. “This isn’t a game of scooters.” Scooters were land breezes that spilled off the edges of the island of Hoole at certain times of the year and provided great sport for its owls.

  A sudden loud boom rang out. Soren felt his ear slits contract against the sound. The noise shook all the owls right down to their pinfeathers and reverberated throughout their hollow bones.

  “Don’t worry!” Tengshu shouted. “It’s just the wind bong.”

  “Wind bong?” Martin asked, still shaking.

  “In our language it translates to ‘last shriek of a mighty wind.’ It bursts through that notch directly below us and then is free again.”

  A high plain now rose beneath them. At its far edge, ranks of peaks rose even higher than the ones they had just left behind. These peaks cut the sky like the teeth of a serrated knife. The air was so clear, they could immediately pick out in the far distance owls rising in the night, and above them colorful qui danced in the shafts of moonlight.

  “They can fly, can’t they?” Ruby asked.

  “Oh, yes. Those are prayer qui. It is the third hour of the death of day and the first quarter of the hatch of night, so they offer the prayers to the wind gods and the ones of night hatch.”

  “Night hatch? Wind gods?” Soren asked. “Are they like Glaux?”

  “Oh, they are all Glaux. In our language, we call them the khyre of Glaux. Which means…”

  “‘The many faces of Glaux,’ in old Krakish,” Otulissa whispered to herself. What in the world awaits us?

  A gong thundered through the mountain passes as the owls landed on a platform of the owlery outside a cavelike opening in the mountain. A group of what Tengshu called pikyus had flown out to greet them. These owls could not have been more different from those of the Panqua Palace. Their plumage was tightly clipped, and the top of their heads nearly bare except for one bright blue feather that stuck straight up.

  “I don’t see how they can even fly,” Gylfie whispered to Soren. But they did, and without any aid from the qui. It was obvious that they flew the qui and not the reverse—the qui definitely did not fly them. The pikyus all stood now with their qui beside them. They came up and first bowed deeply to Tengshu.

  One pikyu, who except for his blue color resembled a Boreal Owl, stepped forward. “Hee naow, qui dong Tengshu.”

  “He’s welcoming Tengshu, the knower of qui,” Otulissa whispered. The pikyu then turned to the owls of Ga’Hoole, bowed, and welcomed them as honored guests. He indicated that they were to follow him.

  “We now go see the H’ryth.” They entered the mountain. Everything was completely different from the resplendent jeweled hollows of the Panqua Palace. There were no luminous colors, and the only crystals were those formed by the ice. But because of the large torches of yak butter, much of the interior had melted down to reveal lovely gray stone swirled with streaks of white quartz.

  The owls flew through long, twisting corridors in an ascending spiral. Other corridors meandered off the central one, and it was clear that within the Hollow Mountain, or Mountain of Time as they called it, there was a bustling community. But it seemed quieter than most communities of owls. It was understandable that this place would be called the Hollow Mountain—but why a Mountain of Time? Was it because the lives of the owls who lived here stretched across so many centuries that the mountain itself was thought to be a receptacle of time? There were perch-loads of chanting owls. Surrounding them, the qui painted with the various gods or faces of Glaux hung. More like a mountain of prayer than a mountain of time, Soren thought as they flew through the vast caverns that formed the interior of the mountain.

  They finally reached the highest point. Above them, portals opened, through which they could see streaming clouds driven by incredibly fierce winds. They were directed to settle on a perch that appeared to be as hard as the rock around them. “It’s not rock,” Otulissa whispered. “It’s petrified wood. Millions of years old, I think.” Another gong sounded. A small pikyu flew forward and in very good Hoolian but with a definite Krakish accent began to speak.

  “Welcome,” he said. “I present His Holiness, Gup Theosang, the seventh H’ryth of the Owlery of the Mountain of Time.”

  At that moment, a pale blue owl flew forward. He looked no different from any of the rest of the pikyus except that from his eyes streamed a pale greenish light. “It is,” whispered Tengshu, “the gleam of deep wisdom. It comes from a life of complete dedication to the basic values of owlness. You might detect subtle glints of green in some of our eyes, but none as vivid this.”

  “Theosang?” Otulissa whispered.

  “It comes from the name of our first H’ryth—Theo,” Tengshu replied.

  Theo! The name hung in the air like the echo of a chime, a chime in the Mountain of Time.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A Feather in the Wind

  Look! Look over there at those…those…those…It looks like something from the weavers guild at the great tree. Something torn loose from the loom,” Primrose shouted.

  This must be a sign that we’re getting nearer to something, Eglantine thought. If it were true, she would be glad. Although the long flight on the River of Wind in many ways had not been as arduous as she had expected, she knew that the terrible sight of those mummified creatures spinning through the tumblebones would haunt her for a long time. She had felt compelled to look at them, for she was fearful that her own brother or some other Chaw of Chaw member might have been caught in them. So despite the lovely, soft, swift breezes of the River of Wind, she had never been able to completely relax. And she was still uncertain if Soren, the king, and the rest of the Chaw of Chaws had actually arrived on this side of the Unnamed Sea.

  She looked up in the direction that Primrose had indicated. Something colorful was dancing in the wind eddies of this marvelous stream of air that had borne them across the Unnamed Sea. They began to follow the strings of the qui just as the Chaw of Chaws had done a few nights before. But this time, the welcoming gong did not sound. Tengshu, who had returned to his hollow at the end of the River of Wind, was caught completely by surprise. He looked up, startled from minding his qui.

  “Hee naow, hee naow,” the sage stammered. “I…I was not expecting you…You are Soren’s sister?” The similarity was striking. But Primrose and Eglantine were blinking in amazement. The color of this owl was astonishing, and yet had they not seen blue feathers in Ambala? And now this blue owl was talking about her brother. My brother! Soren!

  Eglantine gasped with relief. “You mean they got here?”

  “Oh, yes, yes! Soren-sister and Little One.” The sage nodded toward Primrose.

  “Thank Glaux!” Eglantine and Primrose said at once. “We must find them immediately,” Eglanti
ne said. Her voice was almost hoarse with desperation. “The Pure Ones—they are coming. A slink melf—an assassination squad.”

  So this was it, thought the sage. This was the undecipherable part of the eight astrologers’ prediction that had been written in an ancient form of Krakish. There were suggestions of some threat that was to come. But who would have ever thought so soon? When he had returned from the owlery, he had left the Spotted Owl, the one called Otulissa, pondering the writings of the eight astrologers. Tengshu knew that action was necessary, not further thought. He must dispatch these owls to the owlery with all haste and stay here to “welcome” the vicious owls that were to follow.

  “You must fly, Soren-sister, to that distant ridge and then to the next that will appear. Keep Little One,” he said, nodding at Primrose, “under wing, for the winds turn very boisterous.”

  “But Eglantine,” Primrose said. “You’ve lost your crow feather.”

  “Crow feather?” the sage asked.

  “Crow feathers protect us from crows during daylight, and it’s almost day now.”

  “There are no crows here. Do not worry. Just go. And take this.” Tengshu tore off the red tail of his qui. “Fly with this. It is the signal for danger. Imminent danger! Now fly!”

  Far behind them, across that vast sea, a black feather drifted in lazy swirls.

  “What’s this?” the Burrowing Owl Tarn asked.

  “What’s what?” Nyra barked. The frinking blue owl’s instructions had got them absolutely nowhere. “Zong Phong…fly to tomorrow,” she muttered.

  “It looks like part of the crow feather that Doc Finebeak flies with,” Stryker said.

  “What?” A new heat surged through Nyra’s somewhat restored gizzard. “Finebeak! The traitor!” The Snowy, the finest tracker in any kingdom, had joined the owls of the great tree. He had once tracked down her own son. Nyra flew to where Tarn and Stryker were hovering. She stared at the feather and blinked in disbelief. What luck! “This must be the way. The Guardians have gone this way. Follow me!”

  Nyra started a banking turn and examined the center of the swirl where the black feather rotated. They followed it up and suddenly were caught in a savage crosscurrent of slashing winds. The rest of the Pure Ones had followed their General Mam, the supreme commander of the Tytonic Union of Pure Ones. But they now seemed to be fighting for their lives. Nyra ducked in and out of the rungs of the ladder of confusing windkins. “Follow me!” she cried. Tarn was right on her tail, as were Stryker and Wort, but two Barn Owls were sucked away and a Sooty was fighting to escape the grip of the tumblebones. His dark eyes froze in fear first as he saw the feathers stripped from his wing, and then with the terrible realization that his port wing was separating from his body.

  But, finally, the rest of the Pure Ones were safe at last in the streaming River of Wind. Nyra looked around. Yes, she had lost three officers of the slink melf, but there were fifteen others, including Tarn, thank Glaux, who had survived. “We’re here!” Nyra screamed triumphantly as she tumbled into the racing currents of the Zong Phong. “We’re on their track. Vengeance is ours!”

  Tengshu had sharpened his talons on his flintstone. He knew about battle claws, but there was not a pair to be found in the Middle Kingdom. They were forbidden, and had been ever since the time of the first H’ryth, Theosang, who was the battle claw inventor and had left that world of warring owls behind. If owls needed to fight and to kill they would have to find other ways. This was considered the most sacred proscription of any H’ryth in the history of the Middle Kingdom. But fighting is an instinct among all animals, and often a necessity, although the owls of the Middle Kingdom seldom admitted such, for even that seemed like a violation of the great first H’ryth’s philosophy. Compared to other owls, these blue ones were quite peaceful. But they had, over the centuries, developed skills that were every bit as effective as battle claws. And as Tengshu squinted into the dawn and saw his prayer qui torn from the sky, he hardened his gizzard and realized that for the first time in a century, he was about to use these skills.

  The sun glinted off the battle claws of the Pure Ones. These owls were armed, but that didn’t bother Tengshu. It was to his advantage. He could fly better, faster, more nimbly, without the additional weight.

  “Eeeyrrrrk!” he screeched, and like a blue bolt of lightning he cracked the noon stillness with his cry. It was not a battle cry, but one that was known as the “zong qui,” literally the breath of the qui, which would expand an owl’s lungs, and when expelled thrust him through the air at blinding speed. Tengshu had been schooled in the fine art of Danyar, the way of noble gentleness. The exercises he had learned those many years ago, which he continued to practice, had one purpose: to develop the entire owl organism—joints, hollow bones, gizzard, lungs, heart, and feathers—so that an owl could strike with great force using every part and fiber of its body. Tengshu repeated the chant of the Danyar. “I am the root of the tree, the breath of the dragon, the clearness of the air, and the brightness of the stars in the pitch of the night.” He could feel the huge wind, the breath of qui, flow through him.

  “What is it?” Stryker gasped as he saw the blue streak hurtling toward him. In the next second, he had been rendered senseless by a blow to his chest. He plummeted unconscious to the ground. There was blood, but it was caused by the rock he lay impaled upon. Danyar was not about spilling blood, but depriving another of their senses, rendering them unconscious. If they were killed or torn apart, it was rarely from the sharpened talons. To tear with talons was considered an undisciplined way to win combat. Although the end result might be the same—death—the less bloodshed the better. Three more Pure Ones fell from the sky, not from a blow but from witnessing what had just transpired. Their wings locked and their gizzards turned to stone: They had simply gone yeep.

  Nyra felt a terrible unease in her gizzard. Was it one owl that was doing this or several? She peeled off in flight. Tengshu, meanwhile, was engaged with three other Pure Ones. Time for the Zi Phan, the talon like the spiked flower. It was a deadly move, and the three owls followed their lieutenant to the ground.

  Tengshu felt the first weakening in his zi field, which was the region of concentrated energy and control. He had done well. The group of a dozen or more owls that the great moonfaced owl had been leading were scattered. They would undoubtedly reunite, but he had slowed them down. Still, he was three hundred and twenty-five, he reminded himself—and for that age, he had done a decent job. Hopefully, Soren-sister and Little One had reached the outer winds of the Mountain of Time by now.

  Hopefully, he thought, and flew back to his hollow. Some yak tea would restore him and yes, of course, a poem. He must put quill to paper and write—write of something peaceful with great dignity. Isn’t that what Theosang had always done?

  In the dimness of his hollow wrapped in the rich glow of the butter lamp, he picked up his quill and began to write.

  Soon it will be spring

  Ice melts

  The Puoy bird will whoop and wipe its muddy feet on a leaf

  A bud begins to unlock its secret

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Cycle Broken?

  Listen to them.” The blue owl spoke softly. “Their words grow thick. They are drinking the bingle juice. You say it will make them drunk?”

  “Very,” Bell whispered. “My parents only give us just a drop mixed with lots of water on special occasions. But…but…” Bell cocked her head. The little one was obviously hearing something, the blue owl thought. Her hearing was quite amazing. “I don’t think they are drunk yet. But their heartbeats are slowing and they might fall asleep soon. Their breath is snory.”

  “Asleep? Oh,” the blue owl said, suddenly remembering. This was a new word for him.

  “Sleep, you know,” Bell said, turning to look at him. “What do you call it? Is it different in Krakish?”

  “Yes, we call it something else.”

  “What?”

  “We call it going to
the spirit realm.”

  “Oh,” Bell said with wonder. “That’s nice. I like that. But do you actually go someplace?”

  “In a sense.”

  “Where? Is it a good place?”

  “Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is bad.”

  “Explain it to me.”

  “It’s as if part of us leaves our body as it needs rest…the spirit part.”

  “Sort of like a scroom,” Bell said.

  “Yes, of course, sort of like a scroom.” But the blue owl had no idea what a scroom was. Another little, but not quite, lie.

  “And what does your spirit do?”

  “It roams.”

  “Where?”

  “It is hard to explain.” The blue owl truly did not want to explain. His spirit sometimes roamed to a dark and horrible place. A place he felt he had been before, where his feathers had not been blue, but raggedy and black. A place in which he had been possessed by uncontrollable urges for which he knew he must now pay until the phonqua was completed.

  But almost as bad as his previous life was the one he had been forced to lead in the Dragon Court of the Panqua Palace. A life of complete and utter luxury, a life of no physical need, but a life that was no life at all. It had been severed from what the owls of the Middle Kingdom called the golden thread, which tied the spirit and the body together in a meaningful way. So with the cutting of the golden thread, life became a mockery. Perhaps the worst part was the sheer boredom and the constant shame at the travesty that they had grown to look like the magnificent dragons of the past but had none of their power. Every minute of every night and every moon cycle for year upon year reminded them of their impotence, reminded them of the travesty of their so-called lives in this court.