The War of the Ember (10 page)

Plans were made for an immediate departure. Had Coryn cast one last glance at his fire he would have seen something of interest. The images flared in small tongues, looking owlish with roundish heads and the radiating facial feather patterns of Great Grays.

“Sir!” It was the page who interrupted Coryn just as he was about to look into the fire.

“Yes, what is it?”

“A coded message from Silver.” The page handed him a piece of paper.

Coryn unfolded it and quickly translated. The ember had been retrieved from the palace. The three owls, numbers one, two, three, were progressing on their separate routes. So far, no enemy owls had been sighted in or around the palace. Estimates of distance covered was halfway for owl number one.
That’s Ruby,
Coryn thought. Owl number two, one quarter way.
Wensel.
And owl number three, one-third of the way.
Fritha.

Coryn crumpled up the note and put it in the grate. The message was purposely vague, but in fact there was very little that could be ascertained at this stage. At least the ember had been retrieved.
Now if only it could simply vanish forever!
Coryn thought.
My life will never be normal until the ties that bind me to this ember are broken. But what force shall break them?

S
omewhere,
Otulissa was thinking as she and Cleve streamed through the canyon that split the cliffs of the Ice Talons,
somewhere behind the walls of ice and the looming spires that crowned them, there are clutches of fiendish eggs, pulsing inwardly with life. Perish the thought!
Had the murderous owls successfully transported their heinous treasure? Whoever was tending the eggs—most likely Nyra and the Striga—would need to remain concealed. She and Cleve were now looking for evidence, any clue of their whereabouts. A telltale blue feather. Anything. They had had ample time to get to the Ice Cliffs and tuck themselves into the maze of cracks and channeling fissures that penetrated deep into the cliffs and then opened into larger spaces perfect for schneddenfyrrs.
Perfect for infant hagsfiends.
Otulissa almost gagged at the thought. To use the words “infant” and “hagsfiend” in the same breath seemed perverted.

Otulissa’s worst fears—that there was more than
one blue owl from the Middle Kingdom—had been confirmed. There was, indeed, a gang. Somehow they had been recruited from the Dragon Court. Why should it surprise her? If the Striga could strip himself of the cumbersome train of luxuriant feathers, why couldn’t other dragon owls do so, as well? The Striga was a compelling, charismatic bird. He had rallied plenty of disaffected owls in the Hoolian world to his cause. It was not impossible that he could do the same in the Panqua Palace. Otulissa would put nothing past him.

Suddenly, a sapphire radiance suffused the glistening white walls of the ice canyon. “Duck!” Cleve hissed and both he and Otulissa plunged toward the surface of the ribbon of green water that furrowed in from the Everwinter Sea. Otulissa flipped her head up. Four enormous owls in a spectrum of colors ranging from cobalt to sapphire to azure and midnight blue flying above them had fixed them in their pale yellow gaze.
They’re higher than we are! They have the advantage of altitude!
was Otulissa’s first thought. But a quick assessment showed that they were not wearing battle claws. Still, they were fierce, trim, and ready to fight. And yet the owls were not chasing Otulissa or Cleve. They were not diving down after them, but rather making a phalanx above, closing off the free air, the sky, blocking any escape route
except if the two Guardians flew straight out the end of this narrow corridor of ice. But the corridor twisted and turned.
It might grow even narrower, and the enemy might…
Otulissa did not want to think in terms of “might.” She had to think of “now.” But who knew what awaited them at the other end of the canyon? More dragon owls? They had flown into a section that was now too narrow in which to turn around and head back the way they had flown in. But why weren’t the owls descending on them? This ran contrary to the most basic battle strategies. Otulissa had unlocked her own battle claws. These were the new models—the double-hinged retractables, sometimes referred to as “gizzard shredders.”

“This is when it would help to be a puffin,” Cleve muttered, thinking how they could swim underwater.

It would help,
Otulissa thought,
if you wore battle claws!
But Cleve was a gizzard-resister. He did not believe in fighting.
Idiot!

“Otulissa, look, the lower we go, the higher they go. Keep doing that!”

“Doing what?” She was truly irritated with Cleve for being unarmed.

“That thing with your tail.” He and Otulissa were now skimming the water so closely that their undertail
coverts were dragging and casting up a plume of spray. “They don’t want to come down here, Otulissa. They’re scared.”

“Of what? Your battle claws?” Otulissa asked acidly.

“No, of the water, Otulissa! They don’t want to get near the water!”

It was beginning to dawn on Otulissa. They were like hagsfiends, who had an instinctive terror of salt water. Then it seemed for a second as if all the air was being sucked out of the canyon. Otulissa felt herself stagger in flight, but she saw Cleve rocket straight up.
It’s snowing,
Otulissa thought.
It’s snowing blue feathers!

B
uried in a double layer of striated clouds that were streaming with ice crystals, Soren could still hear Wensel’s passage through the air more than two hundred feet below. No owl could hear like a Barn Owl. “That frinking owl is getting distracted!” Soren fumed to Gylfie, who flew just beneath his port wing.

“Are you sure?” Although as soon as the words were out, she knew the question was ridiculous. After all these years she should know better than to question anything Soren might have heard.

“An artist!” Soren muttered.

“Too much imagination,” Gylfie replied.

Creative, sensitive, and bold, Wensel was nevertheless off the flight plan by at least a quarter of a league. Soren didn’t have to see it to know that Wensel had drifted in a southeasterly direction. It was almost as if Soren could hear the unspoken thoughts that were batting about in that artistic brain and making his gizzard
flinch.
He’s wondering, no doubt, if he is the one with the ember.
Soren sighed. The clouds were thinning in the lower stratum of the double layer. He could fly out of them to give Wensel a good cuff and remind him to get back to business.

And, truly, Wensel was wondering just that.
Do I carry the ember in this botkin? Could I tell if I looked down into the dozen or so coals? Would that lick of blue somehow be bluer than the other bonks? Would I see that wonderful indefinable green that I tried to paint in those legend illustrations and could never quite get? Does that green shine in my botkin?

As Wensel’s mind wandered so did his flight. Gylfie could tell Soren was getting more and more agitated. “I can hear that scraping sound off his wings, Gylf.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Wensel is approaching the Great Horns.”

“Oh, Glaux!” Gylfie exclaimed. “Old home week,” she said sarcastically.

The two stony peaks that rose like the tufts of a Great Horned Owl in the canyonlands had, at one time, marked the entrance to St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls, where Soren and Gylfie had once been imprisoned. It had also been the site of a major confrontation in the War of Fire and Ice. A bad place to be. Easy
to get trapped between the two horns.
Been there, done that.
And just at that moment Soren’s gizzard lurched. He heard wing beats, new wing beats, not those of a Barn Owl. Messy, sloppy wing beats. And the whistling of air against featherless legs. More than just two legs, six at least. Which meant three owls.

“Gylfie,” he hissed. “We’ve got visitors! Or rather Wensel does. Burrowing Owls!” Soren had known that sound at once; the scratch of the wind wrapping around the bare sinewy legs of Burrowing Owls. And Digger wasn’t among these sloppy fliers. Digger had learned how to fly better than any Burrowing Owl he had ever encountered. These three owls, Soren could tell, were definitely tracking Wensel. The contingency plan in such an event was to go to ground if the pursued owl could not lose the pursuers. But going to ground with Burrowing Owls was the last thing one would want to do. They were excellent on the ground. They could run, dig, even heave rocks with those long legs. Wensel wouldn’t have a chance.

But Wensel was not a Barn Owl for nothing. He could hear as well as any other and suddenly the sickening sound of that wind against bare legs pierced his musings.
Holy racdrops! I’m being followed.
In that same instant, the lower-level clouds peeled back. Threads of
lightning tormented the sky and illuminated the two Great Horns. In another few seconds, he would be trapped between them. He glanced back at his pursuers. His gizzard gave a painful twist. They were wearing battle claws, and not just any battle claws, but fire claws. The tip of each claw glowed with the embedded coals. Wensel felt himself begin to lose altitude. His wings had locked.
I am dropping. I am going yeep.

Frinkin’ racdrops!
Soren thought. “Extend!” he called to Gylfie.

There were three clicks. One click as the single-action prongs of Soren’s battle claws extended and two more as the double hinges of Gylfie’s unlocked.

A
mazing!” Otulissa said. She was bobbling around on a chunk of ice that had been dislodged from the canyon wall when Cleve had performed the most basic and powerful of all Danyar moves, the Breath of Qui. A student of the Danyar, the way of noble gentleness, never used weapons that butchered an enemy. Instead, Danyar focused on developing the entire owl organism—its joints, its hollow bones, its gizzard, lungs, heart, and feathers—so that an owl could strike with great force using every part and fiber of its body. The Breath of Qui was a massive inhalation that expanded an owl’s lungs to four times their normal size. It was this inhalation and exhalation that were the central elements in the Danyar style of fighting. It most certainly did kill, but in a way that is what the Jouzhen owls call “owlyk,” which meant as bloodlessly and painlessly as possible.

Cleve had just performed the Breath of Qui and now
the bodies of four owls were rapidly sinking into the sea. They were dead by the time they had hit the surface of the water, but what was intriguing was how their feathers had become instantly sodden. They might as well have been stones. Otulissa blinked several times. She was not sure what astonished her more, Cleve performing the Breath of Qui and felling the owls with one exhalation or the fact that the blue owls were already nearly swallowed by the sea. She blinked again and looked up at Cleve. She felt absolutely foolish wearing her double-hinged retractable battle claws with their single-action recoil—
whatever, blah, blah, blah,
she thought.
So much for technology.
He had dispatched the blue owls bare-clawed!

Otulissa tried to compose herself. “Cleve,” she gasped, “I know how you did it, but how and when did you learn?” But before the question was answered, she remembered Dumpy asking Cleve on the flight here why he and Tengshu had exchanged that funny look just before Tengshu left for the Middle Kingdom. “Funny?” Cleve had asked somewhat disingenuously. “Maybe it was just a nervous tic.” It came back to Otulissa now. She stood up straighter on the bobbling ice block. “You told Dumpy you had a nervous tic. But you don’t have any such thing, do you, Cleve?”

“No, my dear, none whatsoever. It would have been difficult for me to learn the way of noble gentleness if I had had a nervous tic.”

“So you’ve been studying with Tengshu?”

Cleve nodded.

“Behind my back?” Otulissa’s voice almost broke as she spoke the words.

“Oh, Otulissa, I feared I might fail. I have never in my life fought before. I am not a fighting owl.”

“But why now? Why did you decide to learn?”

“I had forebodings. When I came to the tree and heard about the Striga and all that he had done and that he had not been killed—I just felt…I don’t know. I think it was love more than fear. I want to do all I can to protect you, and what you value. The tree.”

“So you took up arms for me?” Otulissa asked incredulously.

“Not arms. I learned the way of Danyar. I think things are going to be bad, Otulissa. I think a big war is coming, what with the Striga and Nyra trying to bring the hagsfiends back to life for this war. The stakes are so high. The ember and…
you.”

S
oren blinked. He could not believe that he and Gylfie were in a standoff. Somehow, Wensel had shaken off his fear, regained flight, and unlocked his wings before crashing, but now Soren, Gylfie, and Wensel were perched directly under the twin shadows of the Great Horns, opposite the three Burrowing Owls who were advancing on them, the burning tips of their fire claws glaring like eyeballs from hagsmire. Soren was incredulous. They were only just past halfway to the Wolf’s Fang. They probably would have been there by now if Wensel hadn’t wandered off route. Did Wensel have the ember? Soren hoped he didn’t. He wished with all his gizzard that Ruby or Fritha had it, and were already at the Wolf’s Fang. Nonetheless, this was a dangerous situation. The numbers on each side were even, but their sizes were not. Burrowing Owls were larger than Barn Owls, and about four times the size of Gylfie.

“What’cha got in that botkin, lad?” It was Tarn who spoke. Soren recognized him. Tarn, architect and chief excavator of the extensive burrowing encampment that the Pure Ones had set up in the Desert of Kuneer before the battle in the Middle Kingdom. He had been the highest-ranking officer below Nyra in the Pure Ones.
Who is he working for now?
Soren wondered. But then a voice out of nowhere cawed.

“Hey, he ain’t blue,” said the unexpected voice from high up on one of the Great Horns.

“And that other one ain’t no Barn Owl,” cracked another.

The six owls on the ground all looked up, startled, to see where these voices came from. Soren jerked his head back. He had to strike now while Tarn and the other two Burrowing Owls were distracted. He hurled himself into flight while the others were still looking up.

“You go, owl!” the voice from above them hooted.
This is incredible,
Soren thought. He caught a flash of silver streaking down from the peaks of the Great Horns as he struck at the Burrowing Owl nearest to him and sent him tumbling.
Gotta get him into the air!
Soren thought. In the air above, swirling around the peaks, there were more flashes of silvery gray from which taunts began raining down.

He ain’t blue and he ain’t Barn,

Holy racdrops, it must be Tarn!

They say he be a genius owl.

Say he’s a genius, I say he’s a dud,

Bad-butt owl just like old Kludd!

Was it Twilight? Two Twilights? The Great Grays were everywhere all at once—and Wensel! Wensel had just taken a piece of brush and, in an insanely daring move, flown directly at Tarn, igniting the brush from his opponent’s fire claws.
Now that’s inventive! And crazy!
Soren thought.
But who are these Grays?
The odds had definitely improved with the intervention of the Grays, and Wensel had lit another branch and passed it off to the larger of the two. Gylfie had dashed in and caught a twig midair that had dropped from one of the burning branches. Gylfie could be positively lethal with a burning twig.

Let it burn, let it burn!

Oh, let it burn, burn him not you!

A nice burrow stew!

Burn their butts naked as their legs,

Now just watch them start to beg.

“Hey, Cletus!” the other Great Gray shouted. “Got me a stick—it’s all on fire.” In a daring sweep, he rushed in, skimming, just out of reach of the enemy owl’s fire claws, and knocked him off balance. As the owl staggered, Gylfie darted in and ignited his tail feathers with her twig in an almost balletic movement.

In another two seconds, the owl was consumed in flames. This was all the other two Burrowing Owls needed to see, and they were off in a flash, streaking through the night with the fire claws that had been their undoing.

Soren, Gylfie, and Wensel collapsed, exhausted. “It’s all my fault!” Wensel said.

“You’re right about that,” Soren said wearily. “But you sure fought well and you never lost the grip on the botkin.” Soren then turned to the two Great Grays.

“Who are you?”

“Cletus,” said the smaller of the two.

“Cletus? That’s your name?”

“Nobody else’s.” He turned to the other owl. “Brother Tavis, you know anyone else called Cletus?”

“Can’t say as I do, brother.”

“Don’t tell me you’re from the orphan school of tough learning?”

The one called Tavis shook his head. “No…no, not really. We were pretty well raised until…” His voice dwindled off.

“Until when?”

“Until the night Cletus and I went out hunting for our mum. You see, she was sitting an egg. It was supposed to hatch soon. Our da had already died. Killed by one of the earliest leaders of the Pure Ones.”

“Long before Metal Beak,” Cletus added. “You’ve heard of Metal Beak?”

Soren nodded.

“Well,” Tavis continued, “when we came back she was gone. It looked as if the egg had hatched.”

“We didn’t know what happened.” Cletus now picked up the story. “Then a few nights later we found her body. But no signs of a chick. Just gone. Probably killed.”

Tavis stepped forward and spoke now. “The times were really bad. There were St. Aggie’s raids going on all over the place. We were young so we just decided to go underground.”

“Literally!” Cletus interjected.

“Yeah, we went to the Desert of Kuneer and lived for a long time in abandoned burrows.”

“That’s why we could fight these suckers so well. We know the ways of Burrowing Owls. And yeah, we’ve heard of this Tarn. Bad-butt owl!”

“But we always wondered what happened to the chick, our brother or sister. Don’t even know which,” Tavis said in a voice that seemed to ache with sorrow.

Soren and Gylfie looked at each other in quiet astonishment. The similarities were not just remarkable but extraordinary—the brashness, the humor, the nonstop beak! And, of course, the spot-on fighting skills—all obviously learned in the infamous orphan school of tough learning to which their dear friend Twilight was constantly referring.

“I think I know what happened to that owlet,” Soren said softly.

“You know?” The two Great Grays were stunned.

“He lives.”

“He lives!” the two owls cried joyously, and seemed to swell like smoky moons in the wind-torn night.