“Save breath, stupid one!” the danyk barked, and flew off.
From a spire high on the owlery, Mrs. Plithiver perceived the battle. She did not need to see to know what was transpiring. Every sensory fiber in her body was grasping the most minute details. Feathers flew through the air along with detached fire claws. It seemed as if the Pure Ones were losing their edge in this battle despite their numbers. She began calling out commands to the Hoolian owls. She did not know the ways of the Danyar but she knew her owls, the ones of the great tree. She knew their skills and how they fought. “A flying wedge, keep torches down, now loft and hurl.” The commands she had just shouted out were for a classic rocket maneuver that the Bonk Brigade often used. The owls worked in teams of two. One owl launched the flaming missile, in this case torches. The second owl retrieved it after the target had been hit. It took incredible skill and cooperation. Soren had invented it.
The Chaw of Chaws was being very effective right now, but then Mrs. P. began to perceive something profoundly disturbing. Were they about to lose that edge?
“Oh, Great Glaux.” The rocket maneuver was backfiring. Nyra had lured the two-owl team of Soren and Coryn, uncle and nephew, into an indefensible situation. Mrs. P. couldn’t see it, but she knew it. She felt a great stirring in the air. More Guardians, she thought. They would now outnumber the Pure Ones. Nyra’s own losses were mounting. But did it matter? The slink melf was with her. The whole purpose of this battle, Mrs. P. suddenly realized, was not to destroy all the Guardians but to assassinate just two.
“It’s the Frost Beaks, the Flame Squadron! They’re coming!” Ruby cried out. It doesn’t matter, thought Mrs. Plithiver. Not if they only want Soren and Coryn. She knew in the spiraling bones of her spine that Nyra did not care about the lives of her followers but only sought the death of her own son and his uncle, the brother of her mate, Kludd, whose mask she now wore.
Soren swerved in his pursuit of Nyra. He kept the torch low. Coryn flanked his starboard wing, ready to dive at the moment of launch. Nyra was heading toward a break in a cliff. They were closing the gap. Just before the notch, she ducked down, reversing her direction. But the king and his uncle worked smoothly together. No words were exchanged. They knew instinctively how to maneuver. They pivoted, hovered, and dove. The torch whistled out. But then something flew from the notch, pressing them back against the ice face. It was a Pure Ones’ captain. He caught the torch on the fly. Four Pure Ones now advanced on them. How did we get outmaneuvered? I should have known! Coryn thought, and made a wild dive. But the slink melf was on him. Nyra was howling and called him by his hatchling name. “You had your chance, Nyroc! You had it. Now, what’ll it be? The ember or your life?”
Soren now had nothing—no torch, no battle claws, nothing. He saw a reddish streak. Ruby? Ruby and Twilight?
Save your breath, Twilight, save your breath, the Great Gray cautioned himself, but in his head a chant began. Tore your face once, tore it twice, going to smash you up with that ice…The chant dwindled. He could not even think it. He had to concentrate…concentrate. Ruby had the torch. He would try the Zi Phan, the talon like the spiked flower. He spread the four talons of each foot as far as he could. He knew the power came from the downstroke. He felt his zi begin to tingle and was about to strike.
He would get her—get Nyra once and for all. He opened his beak. “Eeeyrrrrk!” The terrible sound tore the clouds from the sky, shattered the light of the moon, peeled the ice from a cliff. There was another blur of blue! A blue owl Twilight had never seen before. Had that terrible sound come from this owl’s throat or his own? Twilight was confused. Then he saw Nyra lurch in flight. The blue owl hurled himself toward the slink melf. Feathers spun through the air. Blood—so much blood! The ice cliff was streaked with blood. Something bright and shining went flying through the air and there was a metallic clank below. Then silence, a profound silence. Even the wind seemed to have stopped. Soren, Twilight, Ruby, and Coryn alighted on a bloody shelf.
“They’re gone, I think,” Ruby said.
“Look down. There are bodies,” Soren said, breathing heavily. Blood spread in the snow, and in the midst of the red glared a bright metal mask.
“Great Glaux, it’s her!” Soren exclaimed. The four owls lifted into flight and began to hover in descending circles over the carnage. A few seconds later, they landed.
“So much blood,” Twilight said. “I thought these fellows were not about blood. The danyk said that to tear with talons was considered an ignoble way to win at combat.”
They looked at one another, perplexed. “Who did this?” Coryn asked.
“Oh, no.” Soren was slowly walking around the slaughtered owls. Gingerly, he put out his talons and turned the blood-streaked mask over. There was no face beneath it. “There are only three bodies.”
“She got away?” Twilight said.
“I tried,” a voice spoke quietly. It was the blue owl, the one who had so suddenly appeared.
“You tried,” the danyk swooped down. “You call this trying? This is an affront to the entire meaning of Danyar, the way of noble gentleness. This is ignoble.”
The blue owl wilfed. “I am not ignoble. I am not!” He wept. Other owls were gathering. The pikyus gasped in shock at the blood, the torn wings. “It’s death, isn’t it?” the blue owl asked in a trembling voice tinged with desperation.
The H’ryth alighted. “It is death unclean, death with greatest pain. You acted selfishly. You did not kill but murdered. You struck those fatal bloody blows not from the innermost part of your gizzard but from your pride and your anger.”
“But Holy One,” the blue owl now collapsed before the H’ryth, “I have done honorable things.”
“He has,” Doc Finebeak said. “He rescued Bell.”
“Bell?” Soren said. “Bell—what happened to Bell?” Then it came back to him. The terrible dream he had had at the Panqua Palace. That urgency that had coursed through him in his sleep, the feeling that he had to return immediately, that someone very dear to him was in danger. He blinked at the owl and remembered the blue feather that had in his dream floated near the desert floor.
“She is fine now. She is safe, thanks to this blue owl,” Doc Finebeak said. “And not only that, he guided us here.”
The H’ryth winced at the word “guided.” “He is no pikyu!” the H’ryth spoke harshly. “He is an escaped dragon owl.”
“What?” The Guardians looked nervously at one another and began to mumble among themselves.
“But he saved an owlet,” Soren said passionately. “He saved my daughter.”
“Phonqua byrmong ping tsay phrak.” Slowly, as the H’ryth spoke, the words formed meaning in Otulissa’s mind.
“He says this owl believes he has broken the wheel of life, has made a shortcut to change his fate,” she translated the speech softly to the others.
“I have…I have…” the blue owl said in a shrill voice.
“You are still Orlando,” the H’ryth spoke now in Hoolian.
“Call him what you will, but he is a good and decent owl,” Soren continued to protest. Orlando seemed to swell a bit from his wilfed state.
“I thought his name was Striga,” Doc Finebeak said.
A new light burned in the blue owl’s eyes. “The Striga,” he said softly.
The H’ryth felt a deep agonizing twinge in his gizzard. He turned his gaze on the dragon owl. “You are still a dragon owl. Time will tell if you have satisfied your fate, your phonqua.”
“May he come with us?” Coryn asked.
The H’ryth turned to address them. “You are all noble owls. We have expected you for hundreds of years. And we have the deepest respect for you. We see in you many of the traits of our beloved Theo, our first H’ryth. We have all tried to live up to the values that the first H’yrth, Theosang, taught and practiced. We know you do not understand phonqua, but we do understand that Orlando has proven valuable to you. He is not a noble owl. Nor is he in this phase of phonqu
a an evil one. It is your decision if he is to go with you to the great tree. But know this: His phonqua has not been satisfied, has not come full circle.” With that, the H’ryth spread his wings. Slowly, majestically, he rose in the air and soared above the icy peaks, spiraling higher and higher until he reached the highest hollow of the Mountain of Time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Home
The Aurora Glaucora was playing across the sky as the returning owls flew across the Sea of Hoolemere. All the owls of the tree would be out frolicking in the colors that washed the night.
“Like banners! Like the tails of the qui,” Ruby said as she caught sight of the undulating waves’ light.
“More beautiful, I am sure,” Mrs. Plithiver spoke, and tilted her head toward the shimmering, shifting lights of the night sky. It was as if she could sense every drop of color.
“Pelli!” Soren cried out as he spotted his beloved mate, and behind her in the folds of color that swayed in the sky, three young owlets flew. “Da! Da!” It was Bell, who rushed ahead of her two sisters.
“Da!” she shreed, then turned to the blue owl. “Striga, you came back. You came back.”
“Of course I did, little Bell.”
Although tired, the returning owls joined the others and wove themselves through the pulsating banners of color for the rest of the night until the dawn crept over the horizon.
“Death of night,” Soren said to himself.
“What’s that, dear?” Pelli asked as they headed back to their hollow.
“Oh, it’s just an expression of the sixth kingdom. They don’t call it twixt time and tweener or First Black, but death of day for night and death of night for day, or sometimes the hatch of night. I like that.”
“Oh, yes,” Pelli replied thoughtfully. “They see it as a kind of cycle that goes in a circle.”
“Yes, they speak that way. The wheel of life is another expression.”
“Wheel…I saw a wheel once, or part of one, I think. Trader Mags brought it shortly after I first came here. They say it just goes around and around in endless circles. Seems rather pointless, doesn’t it? Wheel of life. I can’t imagine.”
Soren shook his head. No, she could never imagine. In his gizzard, he felt the dimmest tremor as he thought of phonqua and the blue owl who had saved his dear little Bell. The three B’s were already sound asleep. He peered out the port of their hollow. Pink-and-orange light streaked the morning and the Sea of Hoolemere glittered fiercely. It all seems rather…rather…Pelli was looking at him. She sensed what he was thinking.
“Rather tawdry and cheap, isn’t it, after the delicate colors of the Aurora Glaucora?” she said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Soren churred. “It truly is the death of night, isn’t it?”
“But night will return—just like the wheel of life,” Pelli said.
“Yes, like the wheel of life.”
“Mum,” a small voice called. “Can I have a drink of water?” It was Blythe.
“Me, too,” said Bash. “I want one, too.”
But Bell slept on peacefully, dreamless and simply content, safely tucked into the soft nest made from Mum’s and Da’s downiest feathers.
THE GUARDIANS of GA’HOOLE
Book One: The Capture
Book Two: The Journey
Book Three: The Rescue
Book Four: The Siege
Book Five: The Shattering
Book Six: The Burning
Book Seven: The Hatchling
Book Eight: The Outcast
Book Nine: The First Collier
Book Ten: The Coming of Hoole
Book Eleven: To Be a King
Book Twelve: The Golden Tree
Book Thirteen: The River of Wind
Book Fourteen: Exile
Book Fifteen: The War of the Ember
A Guide Book to the Great Tree
Lost Tales of Ga’Hoole
OWLS
and others
from the
GUARDIANS OF GA’HOOLE SERIES
The Band
SOREN: Barn Owl, Tyto alba, from the Forest Kingdom of Tyto; escaped from St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls; a Guardian at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and close advisor to the king
GYLFIE: Elf Owl, Micranthene whitneyi, from the desert kingdom of Kuneer; escaped from St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls; Soren’s best friend; a Guardian at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and ryb of navigation chaw
TWILIGHT: Great Gray Owl, Strix nebulosa, free flier; orphaned within hours of hatching; Guardian at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
DIGGER: Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia, from the desert kingdom of Kuneer; lost in desert after attack in which his brother was killed by owls from St. Aegolius; a Guardian at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
The Leaders of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
CORYN: Barn Owl, Tyto alba, the new young king of the great tree; son of Nyra, leader of the Pure Ones
EZYLRYB: Whiskered Screech Owl, Otus trichopsis, Soren’s former mentor; the wise, much-loved, departed ryb at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
Others at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
OTULISSA: Spotted Owl, Strix occidentalis, chief ryb and ryb of Ga’Hoology and weather chaws; an owl of great learning and prestigious lineage
MARTIN: Northern Saw-whet Owl, Aegolius acadicus, member of the Chaw of Chaws; a Guardian at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
RUBY: Short-eared Owl, Asio flammeus, member of the Chaw of Chaws; a Guardian at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
EGLANTINE: Barn Owl, Tyto alba, Soren’s younger sister
MADAME PLONK: Snowy Owl, Nyctea scandiaca, the elegant singer of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
MRS. PLITHIVER: blind snake, formerly the nest-maid for Soren’s family; now a member of the harp guild at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree
PELLI: Barn Owl, Tyto alba, Soren’s mate
PRIMROSE: Pygmy Owl, Glaucidium californicum, Eglantine’s best friend
OCTAVIA: Kielian snake, nest-maid for many years for Madame Plonk and Ezylryb (also known as BRIGID)
DOC FINEBEAK: Snowy Owl, Nyctea scandiaca, famed freelance tracker once in the employ of the Pure Ones, now at the great tree; Madame Plonk’s companion
Characters from the Time of the Legends
GRANK: Spotted Owl, Strix occidentalis, the first collier; friend to young King H’rath and Queen Siv during their youth; first owl to find the ember
HOOLE: Spotted Owl, Strix occidentalis, son of H’rath; retriever of the ember of Hoole; founder and first king of the great tree
H’RATH: Spotted Owl, Strix occidentalis, king of the N’yrthghar, a frigid region known in later times as the Northern Kingdoms; father of Hoole
SIV: Spotted Owl, Strix occidentalis, mate of H’rath and Queen of the N’yrthghar, a frigid region known in later times as the Northern Kingdoms; mother of Hoole
KREETH: Female hagsfiend with strong powers of nachtmagen; friend of Ygryk; conjures Lutta into being
Other Characters
NYRA: Barn Owl, Tyto alba, leader of the Pure Ones; Coryn’s mother
STRYKER: Barn Owl, Tyto alba, a commander of the Pure Ones under Nyra
GYLLBANE: courageous member of the MacHeath clan of dire wolves; her pup, Cody, was maimed by clan leader Dunleavy MacHeath
BESS: Boreal Owl, Aegolius funerus, daughter of Grimble, who was a guard at St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls; keeper of the Palace of Mists (also known as THE KNOWER)
Blue Owls
STRIGA: Blue Snowy Owl, Nyctea scandiaca, a former dragon owl from the Middle Kingdom seeking a more meaningful life (also known as ORLANDO)
TENGSHU: Blue Long-eared Owl, Asio otis, qui master and sage of the Middle Kingdom
A peek at THE GUARDIANS of GA’HOOLE Book Fourteen: Exile
Otulissa had not gone to Coryn’s hollow for the conference. In addition to her other duties, which were many, she had temporarily taken on the job of chief librarian when Winifred’s, an ancient Barred Owl, arthritis had kick
ed up. So while the Band had been discussing the Harvest Festival with Coryn, Otulissa was minding the library. This was a job she loved, for it afforded her the opportunity to further her research on a weather-interpretation project she had been pursuing since her return from the Middle Kingdom—windkins and the system of air known as the River of Wind that flowed between the Ga’Hoolian world and the Middle Kingdom. Otulissa’s powers of concentration were great. She did not hear the clutch of little owlets giggling over a joke book nor did she hear the owl approaching the desk where she perched. It was actually the desk of Ezylryb, the late distinguished ryb, scholar, poet, historian, and, once upon a time, great warrior of the tree.
The River of Wind Page 13
