“Airmead! Katria!” she howled. The other Blood Watch wolves were more than pleased to see these new arrivals, for they knew the two she-wolves were highly regarded lieutenants in the MacNamara clan.
A few minutes after Katria and Airmead’s arrival, a group of wolves had crowded into the rather small gadderheal of the Blood Watch. Tamsen, the captain of the watch, greeted them.
“Welcome. Words can’t express how happy we are to see you. We are stretched thin, and if it had not been for the Namara’s generosity in sending us wolves, we would truly be in trouble.” She nodded her thanks to Brygeen and Oona, two stalwart MacNamara lieutenants.
“We are here to serve,” Katria said. Then she turned to Brygeen and Oona and spoke. “You can go back now. More of us are coming, and I’m sure your families will be happy to see you.”
Oona stepped forward. “We have not been here as long as some. Tamsen, how long has it been since you last saw your mate in the Blue Rock Pack?”
“Not since the Moon of New Antlers,” Tamsen answered.
“Then you should go back, Tamsen,” Brygeen said quickly. “We have two more MacNamara wolves on their way.”
“You are too generous.”
“No, not at all,” Oona said. “Your pack needs you. This terrible thing — this Skaars dancing — is spreading. It’s more deadly than any famine, and only strong pack leadership can stop it.”
Despite her thinness, Oona was a strikingly beautiful black wolf. Faolan and Edme both noticed that she did not use the words “clan leadership.” The Blue Rock Pack was only a pack in the MacDuncan clan, and Tamsen was only an outflanker. Not a clan chieftain. Had Liam gone by-lang yet again? Was the clan truly without a commander? Then it struck Faolan: Was it possible that Liam, who had never been a natural leader like his father, had been seduced by the Skaars dancing?
It was decided that Tamsen and Greer, a skreeleen whose voice was nearly raw from howling alerts about trespassing outclanners and wolf eaters, should be relieved of their duties after the additional MacNamara wolves arrived. Tamsen and Greer were strong MacDuncan wolves, and the MacDuncans — the Clan of Clans — was tottering on the brink of collapse and needed every good wolf it could get.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AN OWL ON A MISSION
HIS NAME WAS TULLY, AND HE was a double-chawed Great Snowy Owl dispatched from the Great Ga’Hoole Tree on direct orders. His mission was to assess the condition of the wolves of the Beyond and to see if support from the Great Tree could be of use. He was also supposed to figure out where in hagsmire Gwynneth was, as she seemed to have vanished.
Tully did not feel up to the job at all and hoped against hope that he would find that frinking Masked Owl. He knew he could never equal Gwynneth’s knowledge of the Beyond and its wolves. Wolves were just plain weird.
Tully had started regretting his mission from the moment of takeoff. The weather was completely miserable. He thought he had outflown an ice storm that had been forming over the Sea of Hoolemere, but it had caught up with him. His wings had begun to ice up just as he left the Shadow Forest, and he was forced to light down on some Glaux-awful icy cliff that his talons could barely grip. Then, on the next leg of his flight, there was no place to land but the ground, on top of a drift. At least with his hollow bones and the spread of his talons, he didn’t sink in.
The only good thing was that there seemed to be a few snow hares about, and, listening carefully, he could detect the pitter of deer mice. If wolves weren’t so picky about what they ate — all that ridiculous big game — they might not be starving now. Rodents and snakes were perfectly good food. Did everything have to be so big and bloody and so hard to bring down? Wolves must, Tully thought, expend more energy than they consume. Or so it seemed to him. But then again, what did he know about the ways of wolves?
So far, there had been no sign of Gwynneth, nor could he spot any trees. Tully wasn’t sure which he regretted more. Another night roosting in some un-owlish spot was not appealing. Alighting in a drift was hardly inviting. Snow was pretty from the air, but sleeping in it, on it, beside it, or whatever was not fun. It was cold. How did Gwynneth stand this place? Tully wondered. Well, she was a curious bird, that one.
Tully was high and skimming some cirrus clouds that stretched out across the night sky when a draft carried another noise to his ears. It was almost as if the wind ached with the sound. He banked steeply to begin a fast spiral down and was soon hovering over a bizarre sight. There was a circle of wolves flat on their backs. Their legs were extended and they were pawing the air, no, not the air, the sky — as if they were … were what? Searching? Reaching for something?
The words they were howling in their thick wolf brogue were almost unrecognizable, but they were begging, begging for someone to come back. Skaars? Skaarsgard? Who in hagsmire is Skaarsgard? thought Tully.
These wolves were in trouble, Tully realized, even close to death. The thought of them dying in this Glaux-forsaken country stirred his gizzard.
The wolves lay with their eyes rolled so far back in their heads that only green crescents showed. They were muttering unintelligibly, but every now and then Tully caught a word or two — “Skaars … Skaars …” It was a guttural cry.
“Skaars? Who is Skaars?” Tully asked repeatedly. But none of the wolves had the strength to answer. There were perhaps eight wolves in all, and one had died the moment Tully alighted. The other seven seemed to be very close to catching their last breaths. Tully was suddenly aware of a slight ticking sound beneath the snow. Pure instinct surged through him, and he plunged deep into the white drift. Great Glaux! These starving wolves had collapsed on top of a virtual treasure trove of snow mice! Half a wingspan down or less was a maze of tiny tunnels used by snow mice and most likely shrews. Very shortly, Tully had killed two rather plump snow mice and was diving down again for the clutch of babies. No use leaving orphans! Tully thought.
Tully was careful in his butchering. He gave each rodent a quick stab to its cranium to kill it and was careful to make sure that as little blood escaped as possible. Then he surveyed the surviving wolves. It made sense to try and feed the least weak of the wolves first in case the others were too far gone to help. So, taking the biggest of the mice in his talons, he settled next to a large gray male. First he fanned the gray with his wings, trying to stir him into some sort of consciousness.
When the gray’s eyes fluttered a bit so that the green became more than just a thin crescent, Tully spoke. “I’ve got something here for you to eat, mate. Now, don’t you go refusing it.” He gave a quick stab to the life-giving artery at the base of the mouse’s neck. Tully pressed the small furry creature to the wolf’s mouth as the blood spurted, and squeezed the mouse.
“Drink!” Tully snapped. “I’ll hear none of this nonsense about rodents. Rodents are perfectly good nutrition.”
The eyes of the wolf flickered open. A shadow of consciousness glimmered in the green.
Tully chattered on in a calm, cheerful voice. “Come on, old fellow. Drink up now and I’ll strip the meat for you, just the way we do for the little owlets at home. Tender to the bone, this critter is. And I’ll gut him for you as well. Might have a bit of summer grass left in him. Then again, it wasn’t much of a summer, was it?”
The wolf took in a bit of meat.
“Skaars …” rasped the wolf.
“Skaars? No. Tully’s the name, fella.”
“I … I … I know you’re not Skaars, but did he come? The Prophet said so.”
“The Prophet? What are you talking about?” Tully asked.
“The Prophet, the dear Prophet? He was here a moment ago before … before …”
“Before you passed out?” asked Tully.
“Passed out? Oh, never! I was merely in a Skaars trance. He will find me and bring the ladder here to earth and the Cave of Souls as well.”
I’ve pulled myself a real nutter on this one, Tully thought. What in the name of Glaux was this wolf talking about? H
e was completely yoicks. “Have another sip of blood, old fellow,” Tully said amiably. He squeezed the last drops into the wolf’s mouth. “Now I’m going to tend to your mates, but I’ll set this mouse here. Try to eat it if you have the strength. But if you don’t, I’ll come back and strip some more meat from him for you.”
“But what about the Prophet?”
“The Prophet. Uh …” Tully hesitated. Should he say he didn’t know racdrops about any frinking prophet or should he play along? “Uh … I’m sure he’ll be here in a jiff.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE OWL AND THE
GNAW WOLF
TULLY WAS ABLE TO REVIVE ONLY two of the wolves. The rest died. The two who had survived walked off on wobbly legs with nary a word of thanks or a look back. The Snowy shook his large white head.
“No good deed goes … oh, what is the saying?” muttered a voice from behind Tully.
Tully spun his head around and blinked at the ash-colored wolf.
“How you owls do that always amazes me.”
“Do what?” Tully asked.
“Spin your head about like that.”
“It’s the extra bones in our necks.” Tully cocked his head to the side. “You’re not one of them, are you?”
“A Skaars dancer! What, you think I’m cag mag? And would they ever let a gnaw wolf join them? Not on their pathetic lives!”
The wolf began limping down the slight escarpment, and Tully noticed that he was missing a forepaw. “Who are these wolves?” he asked. “You say they were dancing? I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Nor should you understand. It’s too bizarre, too grotesque, unnatural, absurd.” The wolf paused. “Do you have any word to add to the description of that ritual?”
Tully blinked. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Creakle’s the name. Gnaw wolf for the MacDuff clan. But those two, I believe, are the last survivors of the clan. And all that’s left for me is to try and fend off the scavengers.”
“Shouldn’t the others have stayed to help you at least?”
Creakle sighed. “They’re cag mag. Yoicks in your language. Crazy. They don’t care about the dead ones left behind. In their twisted minds, they actually don’t think of them as dead. They think of them as saved by Skaarsgard and of themselves as unworthy of his attentions. So they will go on dancing until they die, too.”
Tully tipped his head and looked at the gnaw wolf, blinking rapidly.
“Confused, confounded, astonished, bedeviled?” the wolf asked.
My, he has a large vocabulary, Tully thought. It seemed to be Creakle’s habit to use long strings of words to suggest a single idea, but every word he spoke did describe Tully’s mental state.
“Yes, yes, all of the above,” Tully replied. “But who is this prophet? I heard them all mumbling about him as they were dying. One or two of them even thought I was the Prophet.”
“Yes, in their delirium I can see how that might happen — it’s the shape of your face.”
“What?”
“He wears the helmet and visor of an owl — a guardian, perhaps from the great tree.”
“What! I can hardly believe it.”
“Believe it! I’ve seen him.”
“But do you know who he is?”
“No. I have my suspicions and I’ve tried to track him, but he’s clever. He never leaves scent marks, and in this famine, all of our scent marks have become quite faint anyway. So it’s difficult.”
Creakle continued, “I’m heading north now, north and west to the Blood Watch. Now, that’s a real job. There are rumors that my old friend the Whistler has distinguished himself and is now a lieutenant of the Blood Watch. Imagine that! A gnaw wolf becoming a lieutenant. I’ll tell you, there are some blessings to this famine.”
“Do you know Gwynneth?” Tully asked.
“Of course. Who doesn’t know Gwynneth!”
“Well, then, have you seen her?” Tully persisted.
“Not for a while. There are rumors that she moved her forge.”
“Might I travel with you to the Blood Watch? My mission was to report on the condition of the wolves and find Gwynneth. But so far I’ve had no luck on the Gwynneth front. And as for the wolves …” He looked at the bodies of the six dead wolves in the snow. “Well, I’d like to be able to report something more positive.”
“I would find your company most satisfactory, pleasing, gratifying. It would gladden me, delight me, indeed tickle the cockles of my marrow.”
Cockles of his marrow? Where does he get these expressions, these words? It suddenly struck Tully that this poor gnaw wolf had had no one to talk to for so long that he’d had to save up all his words.
“Aah,” Creakle said, “I can see that you are a bit perplexed. I think I’ve mixed my metaphors here. Cockles and marrow. Cockles are a bivalve mollusk. Gnaw wolves eat those, too — river clams. Most wolves won’t touch them. I have even gnawed their shells. We gnaw wolves — amazing lot, aren’t we?”
But what was most amazing, Tully realized minutes later when he was flying above Creakle, was how beautifully this pawless wolf moved through the snow. The deep drifts seemed to part for him as he loped north and west. Plumes of snow fanned out from either side of his path, as if he had sprouted gigantic wings. For a moment Tully forgot that Creakle was a wolf at all, but thought he was looking down on some mythical creature. Great Glaux, he thought, what am I seeing?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A SIGNIFICANT
ENCOUNTER
YES, GWYNNETH THOUGHT AS SHE looked at the sleeping Sark, we can see more perfectly in the dark than almost any animal, and yes, we can twist our heads nearly all the way around, and we can fly so silently, and yet … She tipped her head to regard the Sark’s muzzle with wonder. What that wolf can smell!
With only two little holes in her nose, the Sark was able to know that the Prophet had been to the place where Gwynneth’s father had died. The Sark in many ways knew more about and certainly had a longer history with Gwyndor than Gwynneth did. Did Gwynneth envy the Sark? In some ways she did. Gwynneth’s mother had died shortly after she had hatched, and her father didn’t have the time to raise her. So he had taken Gwynneth to the owl she knew only as Auntie, the Rogue smith of the Silverveil. Gwynneth couldn’t have asked for a better teacher. The Great Snowy had learned her craft in the Northern Kingdom from the legendary blacksmith Orf on the Island of Dark Fowl in the Everwinter Sea. But although Auntie was a wonderful caretaker, Gwynneth couldn’t help feeling jealous that the Sark knew things about her father that Gwynneth didn’t. She could almost hear her auntie scolding: Envy is the worst of all sins. To be envious is to be cursed, to be blind to your Glaux-given gifts. Envy is trouble. Envy gets you nowhere in life!
I better get unenvious real quick, Gwynneth rebuked herself. She heard the Sark sigh in her sleep, almost sweetly, as if she were having a deeply pleasant dream. Was she dreaming? Did wolves dream? It seemed an impractical activity for a practical creature such as the Sark.
Gwynneth dreamed when she slept, but it was nighttime now — time for an owl to be awake and flying. Gwynneth did not particularly care for the schedule they had fallen into, but she supposed it worked well. She could be abroad at night keeping a sharp lookout for the Prophet, while the Sark could keep watch during the day. So Gwynneth took one last look at her sleeping companion and stepped out from the buttress roots to lift off into the air.
It was a cold, windless night, perfect for flying, as the air was dense. It’s like flying on the downy, Auntie used to say. The downy was a reference to the soft feathers an owl has beneath its tougher exterior ones. When chicks hatched out and finally dried, they were clad entirely in down tufts. She had just spread her wings to lift off, when the Sark awoke.
“Your second flight tonight, I think. I never realized owls had so little patience,” the Sark said.
“It’s not a question of patience. It’s being cooped up on this — this — th
is vigil or whatever you call waiting in these roots for some lunatic wolf to show up in my father’s helmet.”
“He’ll come, just give him time. You yourself said that the Skaars dancers are more active than ever now.”
“Yes, but the Prophet’s not there. So far, I haven’t had a glimpse of him.” Gwynneth sighed. “And when we do find him, what exactly do we do?”
The Sark’s head jerked with new attention. “Why, we get your father’s helmet and visor back and restore it to its rightful place — to wherever his hero mark was made. We shall force this wolf to tell us where exactly that is. And in the process we can expose this fool, unmask a false god, and stop the dancing.”
“Can you be sure?”
“No, of course not. No one can ever be sure of anything.”
“Why do you think the dancing has increased, ma’am?” asked Gwynneth after a small pause.
“Now, that’s a good question. I have a theory. Those odd lights that have been appearing for the last several nights have somehow incited the dancers. I think they feel it is some sort of sign that Skaarsgard’s arrival on earth is imminent.” She paused. “Poor fools.”
“But, ma’am, what do you think those lights are? I myself find them … well … eerie.”
“Spook you, do they?”
Gwynneth cast her eyes down and nodded her head. She was somewhat embarrassed to admit that they did.
The Sark continued in a much gentler voice. “Oh, Gwynneth, don’t worry. They are nothing more than air — an atmospheric phenomenon similar to ice halos. As the sun sinks below the horizon, ice crystals caught in layers of cold air act like prisms and bend the sun’s rays. We are seeing them now because, although the weather feels fiercely cold like winter, the sun still rises and sets on its summer schedule. In the winter we don’t see such a phenomenon because the sun is at a different angle to the earth. It’s as simple as that!”